Big deal, smart for all parties, really. Apple standards will make Intel step up and become a better foundry partner.
Apple will gain increasingly needed diversification.
US supply chain gets a boost.
Should be fine for TSMC in the short to medium term. Apple not going to risk actual mainline iPhone SoC on Intel any time soon, so lion share of TSMC Apple revenue will be fine.
The biggest reason to do this is because TSMC's N2 node and future nodes will be dominated by AI chips. Since AI chips have far bigger margins than most Apple chips, Apple will get outbid by companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom.
It's not really realistic to make Mac, Watch, iPad chips on TSMC's best nodes in the next 3-4 years - assuming there is no collapse in AI. Unfortunately, this might mean we will get inferior Intel chips for our Macs. Intel nodes, as it stands, are far more power hungry, less dense, and lower yielding.
I still expect iPhone chips to be made on the best TSMC nodes though.
This is the third year in a row that Apple's most advanced chips have used a version of TSMC's 3nm node, with a transition to a more advanced node due in the next generation.
Intel would only need to be on par with TSMC's older 3nm node to Fab Apple's entry level SOCs.
This is really nice for competition in semiconductor manufacturing. The TSMC quasi-monopoly (with Samsung fabs slightly lagging) and limited capacity is not good for the market. Owning leading edge fabs might also help Intel to keep up the competition in the x86 market. Intel is the underdog now!
Pardon my lack of faith but ... this article is clueless. No information whatsoever. Except:
> The Journal report said the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table.
Is this Intel Foundry Services fabbing apple-designed chips, or Apple using Intel-designed chips in their products? I would assume the former but don't see where in the article it says either way.
Even if we make the not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab: building a fab business from scratch to something competitive would take on the order of a decade or more even for a company with Apple's resources. And if Apple bought somebody else's fab business, it seems most likely that it would be Intel's and there would no longer be an Intel do design chips that would be in search of a foundry. (Intel has the only relevant logic fab business that could plausibly end up getting sold off to the likes of Apple.)
Yes, I suppose I was imagining the weird transition like AMD did when they split off Global Foundries. Imagine the remaining Intel being a chip designer like AMD. For someone of my age, it seems both incomprehensible and somehow inevitable. Crazy leadership choices seem to be happening so often in recent years.
Honestly, I found it hard to understand why they abandoned RAM and solid state memory fab sectors too. With all the national security spending by DoD, DoE, etc., I would have thought there is room for some US-based business to remain, even if some of the mass consumer stuff has been lost to low margin international competitors.
They wanted to focus resources on the very profitable top end of the market and leave the low-margin commodity business to competitors. If you repeat that cycle enough eventually you just stop competing with anyone because you’ve fired everyone who has the capacity to do that. Then it’s only a matter of time before you get eaten for lunch.
> not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab
Isn’t running a fab only while it makes top of the line chips a bad idea because you can still make good money from it in later years?
If so, I think they, _if_ they ever want to own a fab (unlikely, IMO), they’ll want to accept outside customers for it when it has stopped being best-in-the-world.
Intel seems far & away the best at chiplet right now. Foveros, EIMB, etc, and possible Z-Angle next... Intel seems way ahead. They're trying to get to 12x reticle size in 2028, and doing it super smartly (eimb).
https://bsky.app/profile/ogawa-tadashi.bsky.social/post/3mld...
Intel has been deemed a national security asset. Essential infrastructure.
The government (both current and previous administrations) is doing everything it can to make sure they do keep up, at the very least. And with enough money being thrown at it, they probably will.
Also keep in mind that none of the big chip purchasers (Apple, Nvidia, etc), want to depend on one supplier for their chips. There are huge incentives among them to encourage Intel's success.
Nobody benefits if just one company controls the state of the art in chip manufacturing, and Intel is one of maybe two other companies positioned to have a chance at competing effectively with TSMC.
I've always thought letting the free market decide everything is not an optimal strategy. Protecting sovereignty of key industries like this is a good example.
What IMO is a bad strategy is the aversion to nationalization that exists in the USA. They buy billions worth of shares in key companies to inject capital during times of crisis, to later divest and refuse to be a player in industry.
China's model is much more complex. There's state-owned companies, companies where the state is a major stake-holder, and private companies too. It seems to afford them more tools to push and steer industries as they see important.
The USA is no stranger to this at smaller scales; airports are state run (at the municipal or state level). This rids them of the burden of profit, and allows them to be strategically use for the broader benefit when it makes sense.
Some are profitable; state-run doesn't necessarily mean unprofitable. But some can written off as infrastructure investments that don't make money but make other industries in the region competitive. At some point this makes sense if you want to keep pushing forward; let's stop worrying too much about making money on X, because if X is a widely-available commodity, we can instead make money on Y and Z.
I see it in Mexico too. Mexico's private healthcare is affordable and good because it has huge state-run healthcare system to compete with. State-provided healthcare isn't the best or fastest healthcare you can get, but it is free. This certainly puts competitive pressure on private healthcare companies, and in a way gives the Mexican government the best regulatory tool: the market itself. The Mexican government isn't trying to destroy private health, but via the state health enterprise it gains tools to steer and push the health industry in ways it may deem important.
Looking at the state of EVs and the car industry, I think it's clear whatever the Chinese government did to incentivize EV innovation was more effective than the federal incentives the USA government provided. At one point the USA government had a 60% stake in General Motors [1]; meaning it was nationalized, before being privatized again by 2013.
I just wonder what the USA could've done with that machinery; could they have offered a cheap EV, even if it's low quality, to push adoption, competitive pressure and get supply chains going? Could they have further commoditized certain parts to lower costs? Could they have strategically opened factories in certain locations to lower the risk and investment cost of future companies, and this way get the ball rolling on creating new auto-industry regions? We will never know, but we do know the USA's auto industry is now on the defense playing catch-up to China, and there seems to be little the USA government can do except placing tariffs and offering subsidies.
Some people also thought Gamestop was a good deal at $400 after 50x-ing...but when you look at fundementals, earnings and actual projected growth and not just the hype, you see the stock for what it really is. At $20 it was a good deal because of the possibilities of long term success (which we haven't seen any actual evidence of yet), but at $125 it is way overpriced.
Another way to look at it. TSMC profit in 2025 was equivalent to Intel revenue (both about $55B), but Intel made zero dollars profit, yet somehow their market cap is now half of TSMCs.
I believe that both of those statements are true. Nonetheless, I and other posters are experiencing one here and can't read the article. Your valid anecdote does not help us.
+1 for me in Australia, but it's due to using an ad blocker:
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For what it's worth, Reader Mode in Firefox displays the article text anyway.
> The Journal report said that the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table.
Ah, so this wasn't a decision Apple freely made based on technical merits. Instead it sounds more like big government and a fancy stock manipulation scheme.
My guess, Apple drags their feet for a couple years and bails after Trump leaves office(or is significantly weakened after the midterms).
Counter point: Apple exists in their size because of the US’s willingness to keep shipping lanes and trade routes open by use of force and US diplomatic efforts to allow for trade to exist in foreign nations.
It’s debatable if this still holds true or is the correct approach given the shitshow going on right now.
It's also a major concern to have a supply chain that can be protected from foreign manipulation.
A compromised supply chain is a huge intelligence/national security risk, not just for military platforms but everything from government and commercial datacenters to personal devices used by both public and private sector individuals.
This is more my imagining a book plot than any real insight, but...
This wouldn't be Apple's first rodeo with Intel. They know how prior partnerships soured. Could a sufficiently powerful shareholder, like the US government, help mitigate Apple's concerns about the outcome of a new partnership? I.e. that Intel would be pressured to honor certain strategic obligations, even if the leadership at Intel isn't so keen?
I imagine it would be a big lift. Asahi linux is managing through reverse engineering the hardware support, without any official documentation. Even with official documentation it would be a significant change from other aarch64 hardware.
Big deal, smart for all parties, really. Apple standards will make Intel step up and become a better foundry partner.
Apple will gain increasingly needed diversification.
US supply chain gets a boost.
Should be fine for TSMC in the short to medium term. Apple not going to risk actual mainline iPhone SoC on Intel any time soon, so lion share of TSMC Apple revenue will be fine.
> Apple not going to risk actual mainline iPhone SoC on Intel any time soon
Not to mention that Intel does not and will not any time in the next decade have the capacity for a product of that quantity.
The biggest reason to do this is because TSMC's N2 node and future nodes will be dominated by AI chips. Since AI chips have far bigger margins than most Apple chips, Apple will get outbid by companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom.
It's not really realistic to make Mac, Watch, iPad chips on TSMC's best nodes in the next 3-4 years - assuming there is no collapse in AI. Unfortunately, this might mean we will get inferior Intel chips for our Macs. Intel nodes, as it stands, are far more power hungry, less dense, and lower yielding.
I still expect iPhone chips to be made on the best TSMC nodes though.
This is the third year in a row that Apple's most advanced chips have used a version of TSMC's 3nm node, with a transition to a more advanced node due in the next generation.
Intel would only need to be on par with TSMC's older 3nm node to Fab Apple's entry level SOCs.
This is really nice for competition in semiconductor manufacturing. The TSMC quasi-monopoly (with Samsung fabs slightly lagging) and limited capacity is not good for the market. Owning leading edge fabs might also help Intel to keep up the competition in the x86 market. Intel is the underdog now!
There are no details in the article.
It is probably a second source deal for a popular chip or a support chip in an older process node like a power converter.
Pardon my lack of faith but ... this article is clueless. No information whatsoever. Except:
> The Journal report said the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table.
... smells what it smells.
Is this Intel Foundry Services fabbing apple-designed chips, or Apple using Intel-designed chips in their products? I would assume the former but don't see where in the article it says either way.
Apple designed chips, manufactured by Intel.
Former, for sure
How many more economic cycles until Intel is asking Apple to fab Intel-designed chips?
Even if we make the not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab: building a fab business from scratch to something competitive would take on the order of a decade or more even for a company with Apple's resources. And if Apple bought somebody else's fab business, it seems most likely that it would be Intel's and there would no longer be an Intel do design chips that would be in search of a foundry. (Intel has the only relevant logic fab business that could plausibly end up getting sold off to the likes of Apple.)
Yes, I suppose I was imagining the weird transition like AMD did when they split off Global Foundries. Imagine the remaining Intel being a chip designer like AMD. For someone of my age, it seems both incomprehensible and somehow inevitable. Crazy leadership choices seem to be happening so often in recent years.
Honestly, I found it hard to understand why they abandoned RAM and solid state memory fab sectors too. With all the national security spending by DoD, DoE, etc., I would have thought there is room for some US-based business to remain, even if some of the mass consumer stuff has been lost to low margin international competitors.
They wanted to focus resources on the very profitable top end of the market and leave the low-margin commodity business to competitors. If you repeat that cycle enough eventually you just stop competing with anyone because you’ve fired everyone who has the capacity to do that. Then it’s only a matter of time before you get eaten for lunch.
> not-particularly-reasonable assumption that Apple would want to own a fab, and the wildly unreasonable assumption that they would accept any outside customers for the fab
Isn’t running a fab only while it makes top of the line chips a bad idea because you can still make good money from it in later years?
If so, I think they, _if_ they ever want to own a fab (unlikely, IMO), they’ll want to accept outside customers for it when it has stopped being best-in-the-world.
What year is this? What happened to the M1, M2, ... MN chips of Apple's? Is Apple going to go with Motorola after Intel???
Obviously I couldn't read the article due to it being paywalled.
Intel seems far & away the best at chiplet right now. Foveros, EIMB, etc, and possible Z-Angle next... Intel seems way ahead. They're trying to get to 12x reticle size in 2028, and doing it super smartly (eimb). https://bsky.app/profile/ogawa-tadashi.bsky.social/post/3mld...
That alone is a strong reason for Apple to show up. Apple has some pretty wild patents on chiplet System-on-Chip designs! https://bsky.app/profile/ogawa-tadashi.bsky.social/post/3mi7...
Wasn't the whole apple silicon thing about Intel being unable to keep up?
Is this maybe a way to expand the affordable neo line?
It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s Fab capabilities which have improved lately.
Also, the NEO line uses cutting edge technology that is necessary for the iPhone SOC, so this is probably for other chips.
Intel has been deemed a national security asset. Essential infrastructure.
The government (both current and previous administrations) is doing everything it can to make sure they do keep up, at the very least. And with enough money being thrown at it, they probably will.
Also keep in mind that none of the big chip purchasers (Apple, Nvidia, etc), want to depend on one supplier for their chips. There are huge incentives among them to encourage Intel's success.
Nobody benefits if just one company controls the state of the art in chip manufacturing, and Intel is one of maybe two other companies positioned to have a chance at competing effectively with TSMC.
I've always thought letting the free market decide everything is not an optimal strategy. Protecting sovereignty of key industries like this is a good example.
What IMO is a bad strategy is the aversion to nationalization that exists in the USA. They buy billions worth of shares in key companies to inject capital during times of crisis, to later divest and refuse to be a player in industry.
China's model is much more complex. There's state-owned companies, companies where the state is a major stake-holder, and private companies too. It seems to afford them more tools to push and steer industries as they see important.
The USA is no stranger to this at smaller scales; airports are state run (at the municipal or state level). This rids them of the burden of profit, and allows them to be strategically use for the broader benefit when it makes sense.
Some are profitable; state-run doesn't necessarily mean unprofitable. But some can written off as infrastructure investments that don't make money but make other industries in the region competitive. At some point this makes sense if you want to keep pushing forward; let's stop worrying too much about making money on X, because if X is a widely-available commodity, we can instead make money on Y and Z.
I see it in Mexico too. Mexico's private healthcare is affordable and good because it has huge state-run healthcare system to compete with. State-provided healthcare isn't the best or fastest healthcare you can get, but it is free. This certainly puts competitive pressure on private healthcare companies, and in a way gives the Mexican government the best regulatory tool: the market itself. The Mexican government isn't trying to destroy private health, but via the state health enterprise it gains tools to steer and push the health industry in ways it may deem important.
Looking at the state of EVs and the car industry, I think it's clear whatever the Chinese government did to incentivize EV innovation was more effective than the federal incentives the USA government provided. At one point the USA government had a 60% stake in General Motors [1]; meaning it was nationalized, before being privatized again by 2013.
I just wonder what the USA could've done with that machinery; could they have offered a cheap EV, even if it's low quality, to push adoption, competitive pressure and get supply chains going? Could they have further commoditized certain parts to lower costs? Could they have strategically opened factories in certain locations to lower the risk and investment cost of future companies, and this way get the ball rolling on creating new auto-industry regions? We will never know, but we do know the USA's auto industry is now on the defense playing catch-up to China, and there seems to be little the USA government can do except placing tariffs and offering subsidies.
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2013/12/09/government-sells-the-last-of...
Ah yes the classic pump. Has a 3x parabolic move ever maintained price over extended periods of time?
Look at every other semiconductor stock over the last 5 years.
Intel was not "allowed" to fail. (But Spirit Airlines was) and now the stock is at an all time high.
It was only 9 months ago [0] that almost everyone here was bearish (not me [1]). Now it is the opposite.
Next we will here some folks wishing they should have joined Intel when it was $20 a share.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44675965
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44676641
18A was Schrodinger's fab: we didn't know if it was alive or dead. Now we know it's alive.
Some people also thought Gamestop was a good deal at $400 after 50x-ing...but when you look at fundementals, earnings and actual projected growth and not just the hype, you see the stock for what it really is. At $20 it was a good deal because of the possibilities of long term success (which we haven't seen any actual evidence of yet), but at $125 it is way overpriced.
Another way to look at it. TSMC profit in 2025 was equivalent to Intel revenue (both about $55B), but Intel made zero dollars profit, yet somehow their market cap is now half of TSMCs.
Paywall
Seemed to load just fine here.
I am also getting a paywall. Subscribe to read more.
Reuters usually don't have paywalls, and neither I am experience one here.
I believe that both of those statements are true. Nonetheless, I and other posters are experiencing one here and can't read the article. Your valid anecdote does not help us.
+1 for me in Australia, but it's due to using an ad blocker:
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For what it's worth, Reader Mode in Firefox displays the article text anyway.
another triumph for x86
This is a fab deal, nothing to do with x86
Technically, but the money doing this will indirectly help Intel's chip line through experience and increased fab quality
> The Journal report said that the U.S. government, which became Intel's largest shareholder last year under a deal with its CEO Lip-Bu Tan, played a major role in bringing Apple to the negotiating table.
Ah, so this wasn't a decision Apple freely made based on technical merits. Instead it sounds more like big government and a fancy stock manipulation scheme.
My guess, Apple drags their feet for a couple years and bails after Trump leaves office(or is significantly weakened after the midterms).
Or use it to de-risk their supply chain.
Then why did the USG need to get involved to bring AAPL to the table?
Sure, supply chain redundancy is good, but that wasn't enough to get AAPL interested before.
Intel chip fab facility in Arizona came online recently, probably has something to do with it, the manufacturing capability didn't exist before.
>big government and a fancy stock manipulation scheme.
What's wrong with US gov caring about supply chain and manufacturing capability of the most needed technology right there - on American soil?
It is in US' interest to be able to produce such complex tech locally
Yes, it's called industrial policy and it can work very well.
The issue for some is the driving force is military, to secure their supply chain to kill people.
Counter point: Apple exists in their size because of the US’s willingness to keep shipping lanes and trade routes open by use of force and US diplomatic efforts to allow for trade to exist in foreign nations. It’s debatable if this still holds true or is the correct approach given the shitshow going on right now.
It's also a major concern to have a supply chain that can be protected from foreign manipulation.
A compromised supply chain is a huge intelligence/national security risk, not just for military platforms but everything from government and commercial datacenters to personal devices used by both public and private sector individuals.
This is more my imagining a book plot than any real insight, but...
This wouldn't be Apple's first rodeo with Intel. They know how prior partnerships soured. Could a sufficiently powerful shareholder, like the US government, help mitigate Apple's concerns about the outcome of a new partnership? I.e. that Intel would be pressured to honor certain strategic obligations, even if the leadership at Intel isn't so keen?
Would love to see this mean the return of Bootcamp, but that's probably gone forever.
Boot camp is a windows problem. This can be done today on apple silicon but Microsoft dosent want to go through the effort to support it.
I imagine it would be a big lift. Asahi linux is managing through reverse engineering the hardware support, without any official documentation. Even with official documentation it would be a significant change from other aarch64 hardware.