The Information reports the two companies have agreed to form a joint venture, with TSMC set to own 20% of Intel’s foundry business under terms of the tie-up.
The make-up of the remaining 80% wasn’t disclosed, though TSMC is understood to have approached fabless chip designers Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom about a potential joint-venture takeover.
The White House has reportedly played a central role in brokering the agreement. However, it's unlikely that a future Trump administration would approve a deal that results in Intel becoming fully foreign-owned.
Investors reacted positively to the news, with Intel’s volatile stock price rising to $22.43, up from earlier in the day at $20.94.
The company’s stock had previously taken a hit this week following its annual Vision event, where new CEO Lip-Bu Tan laid bare the scale of the challenges ahead, urging shareholders and customers to “be brutally honest with us”.
In a twist of industry irony, TSMC could soon own a slice of the foundry business it left in the dust. TSMC is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, while Intel foundries reported a $7 billion operating loss in 2023.
Now structured as an independent subsidiary, Intel’s foundry unit has been the subject of months of speculation, with a sell-off viewed as a potential way to fuel the company’s coffers. Intel has laid off 15% of its workforce and scaled back several factory projects as part of cost-cutting measures.
Qualcomm had previously expressed interest in Intel, but its interest cooled over concern about the complexity of any potential deal.
The takeover reports come after TSMC unveiled plans to invest $100 billion to bring chip manufacturing to the US — a move prompted by President Trump’s threat of hefty tariffs on semiconductor imports from Southeast Asia.
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