Intel Foundry Nears Major Customer Wins as Apple, AMD, Google, and NVIDIA Weigh Deals

Intel Foundry has been attracting significant attention from the industry lately, with some of the world’s largest companies expected to announce new foundry commitments this fall, according to UBS Group. The investment bank has reported that Intel Foundry is on the brink of securing many new contracts scheduled for this fall, citing the release of version 1.0 of the 14A node process design kit (PDK) as a key catalyst. There have been numerous rumors that Apple, AMD, NVIDIA, Google, and Broadcom are considering utilizing Intel’s silicon manufacturing, including the 18A, 18A-P, and 18A-PT nodes, as well as the upcoming 14A node. Apple is rumored to manufacture some of its M-Series “Apple Silicon” laptop processors in 2027 using the 18A-P node, while Google might leverage Intel’s EMIB and Foveros 3D advanced packaging technology for some of its TPU designs.

Companies regularly evaluate leading industry nodes but often choose TSMC’s manufacturing due to its reliability, high volume capacity, and advanced packaging, which has produced numerous high-performance and low-power designs at scale. However, Intel Foundry has been investing significant resources and logistics into attracting external clients, leading UBS to anticipate multiple foundry commitments being announced this fall. Late last year, we learned that Apple was waiting for Intel to release the 18A-P PDK version 1.0 or 1.1, scheduled for Q1 and Q2 of 2026, respectively. As we are now in Q2, we are awaiting further confirmation to see if Apple proceeded with the deal, but UBS expects it did.

Another significant opportunity for Intel Foundry lies not only in its silicon manufacturing but also in its advanced packaging technologies. Companies can design 2D, 2.5D, and 3D building blocks with silicon using Intel’s EMIB, EMIB-T, and EMIB-M variants, which can stack multiple chiplets and combine numerous HBM memory modules into a single package. Intel has even demonstrated the use of 47 tiles in a single package and envisions multi-kilowatt solutions per package. Meanwhile, TSMC’s leading packaging technology, CoWoS, reportedly struggles with four reticle-sized dies, causing some production issues for NVIDIA.