TSMC has allegedly made a pitch to US chip giants NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, for a potential Joint Venture (JV) for Intel and its factories, according to sources close to Reuters.
Under TSMC’s proposal, the Taiwan-based chipmaker would run the operations of Intel’s foundry division, and would own no more than 50% of the business. Besides the three major tech giants, Qualcomm is also another potential investor that was pitched to.
At this point, talks about a JV for Intel properties are still early stages but are equally important because they come at a time when US President Donald Trump is essentially forcing manufacturers in the chipmaking industry to build factories on US soil, as part of his ongoing goal to boost the US’ advanced manufacturing capabilities.
For that matter, any deals made between TSMC and its potential JV suitors will still require the final approval from the Trump administration, which has made clear that it does not wish for Intel or its foundry division to be fully foreign-owned.
We’re starting to sound like a broken record at this point but it’s not been a good couple of years for Intel. The blue chipmaker reported a net lost of US$18.8 billion (~RM83.38 billion) in 2024. One major blow to its fortunes was the performance degradation issue with its enthusiast-level 13th and 14th Gen Core i9 CPUs, after which the blows continued being delivered with the layoff of thousands of staff, followed by the immediate resignation of its then CEO, Pat Gelsinger.
At the time of writing, neither TSMC nor the Trump administration have commented on the matter.
(Source: Reuters)
