As Intel works to rebuild its advanced process capabilities and foundry business, questions about whether the company is a competitor or collaborator with TSMC have been a persistent focus for industry observers — a question Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) addressed directly at COMPUTEX 2026 on June 2.
Speaking at the post-show press conference, Tan said TSMC founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) and Chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) are both long-trusted friends. He described TSMC as a highly trustworthy partner, and Intel as an important TSMC customer that would continue to be so going forward.
"I don't look at people as competitors — I look at collaboration," Tan said. The statement signals Intel's supply chain strategy under new leadership: pragmatic, non-confrontational, and deliberately focused on partnership rather than rivalry.
Why the Relationship Is Both Competitive and Cooperative
Intel is simultaneously pursuing two goals that create structural tension: rebuilding its own advanced manufacturing capabilities through Intel Foundry, while continuing to rely on TSMC for a portion of its products.
Intel has been advancing its own process nodes — most notably Intel 18A — and aims to attract external customers to its foundry platform. Yet in the near term, Intel cannot fully exit external manufacturing arrangements. This places the two companies in a co-opetition dynamic that Tan's emphasis on partnership directly acknowledges.
Maintaining stable access to TSMC's capacity and advanced processes remains a near-term operational necessity for Intel, regardless of its longer-term foundry ambitions. Tan's framing reflects the pragmatic recalibration that reality demands.
Intel Foundry: No Customer Names, but Watch the Capex
A key question at COMPUTEX centered on whether Intel Foundry has secured major customers — with particular interest in whether NVIDIA might place orders with Intel, given that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang had previously discussed the possibility of cooperating with Intel Foundry.
Tan declined to name any clients. He said Intel Foundry is making significant progress and has multiple potential customers, but maintained a firm policy of not disclosing customer identities.
He offered an indirect indicator instead: capital expenditure. "The best way to know if Intel Foundry is succeeding is to watch when we start investing in capex," Tan said. "Once capex begins, you'll know there is customer demand behind it."
For investment markets, the signal is consequential. Advanced-node wafer fabrication is among the most capital-intensive industries in the world. Capacity expansion typically requires visible customer commitments before major spending is authorized. By linking Intel Foundry's credibility to capex timing, Tan has effectively set a measurable — if indirect — benchmark for external validation.
Intel Foundry still faces multiple near-term challenges: building customer trust, demonstrating process maturity, improving yields, optimizing capacity allocation, and establishing a competitive cost structure.
A Hybrid Manufacturing Model, Not a Binary Choice
Intel executives at the press conference also clarified the company's broader fabrication strategy. Rather than treating internal manufacturing and external foundry partnerships as mutually exclusive, Intel described a hybrid approach: using its own process nodes where appropriate, and engaging external partners — including TSMC — where product requirements demand it.
Executives said Intel 18A holds particular appeal for PC and edge computing applications, citing its flexibility in optimizing device performance. Under Tan, Intel no longer frames in-house fabrication versus outsourcing as a binary decision, but as complementary resources within an integrated product roadmap.
Custom Silicon as a Growth Engine
Beyond foundry services, Intel used COMPUTEX to highlight custom silicon and vertical industry solutions as a distinct growth vector.
Intel executives said custom chip development is not new to the company — it has been conducted quietly for years — but that the difference now lies in scale and strategic focus. Intel said it aims to bring this capability to a broader range of customers.
Specific partnerships announced or highlighted include collaboration with Google on Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) for hyperscale cloud operators, and a long-term agreement with Ericsson in telecommunications infrastructure.
Intel also outlined vertical industry engagements spanning Foxconn (鴻海) rack-scale AI infrastructure, Siemens industrial and high-performance computing, Hitachi wafer fabrication tools and quantum computing, Echo Neurotechnologies in neuromorphic processing, and Greenstone Biosciences in AI-assisted drug discovery.
The breadth of these partnerships indicates that Intel is not content to remain a standard processor vendor — it aims to combine processors, custom chips, AI software, and deep integration into industry workflows.
What This Means Beyond Taiwan
The Intel-TSMC relationship carries implications well beyond the two companies. TSMC remains the world's dominant advanced-node foundry, and Intel is the only Western company with declared ambitions to compete at that level. How these two firms navigate co-opetition will shape global semiconductor supply chain resilience and the long-term viability of advanced manufacturing capacity outside East Asia.
For TSMC, Intel represents both a current revenue source and a potential long-term competitor in the foundry market. For Intel, TSMC is simultaneously the benchmark it must close the gap with, and an indispensable partner it cannot afford to alienate during the transition.
Tan's framing — pragmatic, collaborative, and deliberately non-confrontational — reflects the constraints of that dual reality. This co-opetition dynamic between Intel and TSMC will be one of the most important indicators to watch in the global semiconductor supply chain over the next several years.
