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Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has a long track record in the chip industry. Now he needs a big customer

Daniel Nenni

Admin
Staff member
Key Points
  • - Lip-Bu Tan is a little over two months into his gig running Intel, and he’s making his intentions to grow the foundry business clear.
  • - But persuading Wall Street that Intel can be a real player in the chip manufacturing business requires that Tan find a big customer willing to move some production.
  • - “One Nvidia, one Qualcomm, one Apple, one something of volume that really shows this meaningful commitment for the fab to build significant volume would really change the whole narrative,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of industry research firm The Futurum Group.
Intel's CEO Lip-Bu Tan speaks at the company's Annual Manufacturing Technology Conference in San Jose, California, U.S. April 29, 2025.  REUTERS/Laure Andrillon

Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan speaks at the company’s Annual Manufacturing Technology Conference in San Jose, California, U.S. April 29, 2025.
Laure Andrillon | Reuters


When Lip-Bu Tan was named CEO of Intel a little over two months ago, he brought with him plenty of name recognition. Tan spent 12 years running Cadence Design Systems and before that was a prominent venture capitalist. He’s also held board seats at SoftBank and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

“Lip-Bu’s Rolodex is like nobody else’s in the semiconductor industry,” Intel CFO David Zinsner said at a financial conference this month. Zinsner said Tan recently met with 22 potential customers and partners in a single day.

At age 65, Tan is going to need more than a vast database of contacts and four decades of operating and investing experience to turn around the company that put the silicon in Silicon Valley but is struggling to stay relevant in a market that’s increasingly centered around artificial intelligence.

Once the world’s largest chipmaker, Intel has lost 70% of its value since early 2020. It’s roughly flat since Tan was named as CEO on March 12.

Tan’s jam-packed schedule in large part reflects a need to change the industry’s perception of Intel. No longer the dominant player in semiconductors, Intel is trying to pivot into chip manufacturing, especially as the U.S. focuses on investing in onshoring critical technologies. Tan has been listening to customers to find out specific technical requirements they would need from Intel as a foundry, he’s said in public remarks.

Under Tan’s predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, Intel spent $90 billion between 2021 and 2024 on building the company’s foundry operations and unlocking additional U.S. government funding. Capital expenditures in 2025 are expected to reach $18 billion.

Investors, and eventually the board, lost trust in Gelsinger’s ability to generate much of a return on that investment, leading to his ouster late last year. In an industry where roadmaps and capital plans are measured in five-year increments, Tan is under pressure to start building confidence immediately.

Pat Gelsinger had the right plan to lead Intel, but patience ran out, says Futurum CEO Daniel Newman

“The foundry business, it operates at a different time scale,” said Alvin Nguyen, an analyst at Forrester. “It operates with a level of investment that is tough to stomach, and very few publicly traded companies can deal with it."

Intel faces a plethora of other challenges that all predate Tan’s tenure. The company’s central processors, or CPUs, that for decades were the most expensive and important part in computers, have been supplanted by AI chips, primarily graphics processing units, or GPUs, from Nvidia. Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices has picked up substantial market share in CPUs and server chips, and Qualcomm has emerged as a big challenger as well.

Tan is working on an AI strategy under Sachin Katti, who was named chief technology officer in April after joining the company in 2021.

Tan was born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore. He moved to the U.S. in the 1970s and studied nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He’s since touched just about every aspect of the chip industry.

Before joining Intel, he was CEO of Cadence, which makes electronic design automation, or EDA, software, widely used by engineers at fabless chip companies to design new processors. As a venture capitalist at Walden International, Tan invested in Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China’s national foundry, in 2001, and was on the board for over a decade.

He’s now betting on Intel, not just with his time but also his wallet. When he became CEO, he bought $25 million of shares, which he’ll have to hold in order to earn his full compensation over the next five years.

Tan has been keeping a fairly low profile since starting the gig in March. He’s yet to sit for a press interview, and Intel declined to make Tan available for this story. But in his two public speeches as CEO at Intel events, he’s laid out elements of his strategy.

“We need to do a better job — make it easier for all of you to use our technology,” Tan said at a foundry event earlier this month. “We will rapidly embrace industrial standards, EDA tools and best design practices.”

One big customer
The fastest way to change the trajectory would be to announce a big foundry customer. Locking in substantial orders would serve as both a vote of approval to other potential customers and a signal to Wall Street that all those expenses will soon start turning into revenue.

“One Nvidia, one Qualcomm, one Apple, one something of volume that really shows this meaningful commitment for the fab to build significant volume would really change the whole narrative,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of industry research firm The Futurum Group.

Tan’s second public appearance as CEO came in April at Intel’s Foundry Direct Connect event in San Jose, California, a few miles from the company’s headquarters. There he hinted at one of his key objectives: rebuilding confidence.

“This is a truly a service business, and that is built on the foundational principle of trust,” Tan said. “You have to be patient to earn your trust.”

Intel wafers are displayed on stage at the company's Annual Manufacturing Technology Conference in San Jose, California, U.S. April 29, 2025.  REUTERS/Laure Andrillon

Intel wafers are displayed on stage at the company’s Annual Manufacturing Technology Conference in San Jose, California, U.S. April 29, 2025. Laure Andrillon | Reuters

At the event, populated largely by people from the insular world of chip design and manufacturing, Tan directly addressed foundry customers, discussing the company’s specific technologies in power and packaging that put it in position to take on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the largest foundry in the world.

Outside the convention center, banners still hung promoting the Nvidia GTC conference, which had taken place the prior month and packed the building’s ballroom.

Tan mostly acted like an emcee, calling up the CEOs of chip design partners such as Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens, who took the stage to discuss using Intel’s technology.

A key issue for Intel to address is the broadening of its foundry, which was originally designed for its own chip design teams, meaning some of the tools and infrastructure were company-specific. Intel has given the name 18A to its chip technology that it hopes to start producing in volume this year.

“One thing about 18A was, it was developed initially as just something for Intel, and we intercepted it relatively early,” Zinsner said earlier this month. That allowed the company to develop process design kits, or PDKs, “for the industry, but it still was not from the ground up developed as a foundry node,” he said.

Zinsner said the company’s next chip generation, 14A, will be built for external customers. Analysts say that 18A may be Intel’s first foundry process that could beat TSMC’s rival process to market.

Tan also recognizes that TSMC has created an industry standard, so using the same tools and technology would allow companies to more simply bring over work from other foundries. He said Intel is making its PDK easier to use.

“My top priority is to make it easier for the ecosystem to do business with Intel,” he said.

One of the speakers at the event was Anirudh Devgan, who succeeded Tan as CEO of Cadence. Tan asked Devgan what AI chip companies need to see if they’re to build on Intel. Devgan said the most important consideration is the need to focus on what the customer wants rather than what Intel prefers.

“Intel Foundry, as you all know, is like the service business, so the customer comes first,” Devgan said. “I know Lip-Bu has very good instincts to understand what the customer wants.”

It’s a stark change in approach for a company that for decades was focused on selling its own chips and not on creating an ecosystem. In a podcast earlier this year, TSMC founder Morris Chang said that Intel, during its glory years, acted “like they were the only guy with microprocessors.”

If there was a disappointment at the Intel event, it was the lack of an announcement about a major new customer.

Zinsner previously said, in response to a question about how many customers Intel had signed up for its foundry, that the company first needs to “eat its own dogfood,” indicating that the 18A process would be primarily used by Intel itself.

Leaner company
While Tan looks outward for business development, he’s turning inward to try to fix corporate culture, flattening the organization, which grew fiercely in recent years as it staffed up to build the foundry unit.

Intel said on its April earnings call that job cuts will come this quarter, though the company didn’t provide a specific number. An Intel representative declined to comment on the matter. Intel announced in August, while Gelsinger was still in charge, that it was laying off 15,000 employees and would explore cuts in its portfolio.

Wall Street welcomes more belt tightening but warns that the company can’t cut its way to a successful revival.

Deutsche Bank’s Ross Seymour, who recommends holding the stock, wrote in a May note that, even with the “welcome and necessary cost-cutting actions,” the company’s “path to meaningful earnings/free cash flow generation remains cloudy and highly dependent on a turnaround” in the foundry business.

Equally important to Tan is getting rid of what he views as too much bureaucracy.

“It has been eye-opening for me to see how much time and energy is spent on internal administrative work that does not move our business forward,” Tan wrote, in a memo to employees in April.

He said Intel would have to learn how to do more with fewer people and that employees must be back in the office for at least four days a week by September.

“I’ve been surprised to learn that, in recent years, the most important KPI for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams,” Tan wrote, referring to key performance indicators. “Going forward, this will not be the case.”

Tan also promoted several engineering leaders, giving him greater visibility into the organization. Zinsner said Tan has between 15 and 17 direct reports, because he wants to be closer to the “lowest” levels of the organization.

“He’s hearing the good, the bad, the ugly of what’s going on, so that he can help address those,” Zinsner said.

 
Thankfully that is Lip-Bu's superpower, customers.

“Lip-Bu’s Rolodex is like nobody else’s in the semiconductor industry,” Intel CFO David Zinsner said at a financial conference this month. Zinsner said Tan recently met with 22 potential customers and partners in a single day.

Lip-Bu is also a closer.

“One Nvidia, one Qualcomm, one Apple, one something of volume that really shows this meaningful commitment for the fab to build significant volume would really change the whole narrative,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of industry research firm The Futurum Group.

This is nonsense. A foundry cannot build an ecosystem with one customer. Intel Foundry needs big customers as in plural. This guy has zero semiconductor experience and zero foundry experience. I cannot wait until AI replaces these talking heads.
 
This is nonsense. A foundry cannot build an ecosystem with one customer. Intel Foundry needs big customers as in plural. This guy has zero semiconductor experience and zero foundry experience. I cannot wait until AI replaces these talking heads.
I understand your point about ecosystem and having just one customer but Intel Foundry already has a large volume customer which is Intel Products. If they can get another large volume customer like Apple or Qualcomm, it goes long way to help Intel Foundry's financials to work, so that they can stay in the game for long term. Also recognition as a serious player to gain trust from other customers. I think that is what is meant here.
 
.................

“One Nvidia, one Qualcomm, one Apple, one something of volume that really shows this meaningful commitment for the fab to build significant volume would really change the whole narrative,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of industry research firm The Futurum Group.

This is nonsense. A foundry cannot build an ecosystem with one customer. Intel Foundry needs big customers as in plural. This guy has zero semiconductor experience and zero foundry experience. I cannot wait until AI replaces these talking heads.

It is really interesting that the EUV litho introduction in leading-edge HVM around 2019 resulted in such a strong shake-out in IDMs&Foundries, that the consequences are still being felt in 2025. It seems that EUV in logic may really be a phase-transition for economy-of-scale winner takes all.

That whole discussion around customers and spinning off Intel Foundry (or not) is also ongoing with Samsung Foundry.

The capital and the large efficient usage scale (#wafers) needed to improve yield to economical levels makes the Samsung people in Korea also wonder what to do:

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.co...on-hanging-over-Samsungs-foundry-unit/2314593

For now it seems TSMC is the only trusted EUV-logic foundry that can give all its attention and resources to its customers. Both Intel and Samsung foundry are consumed by internal company issues.

Perhaps the rapidly changing global semi-market forces are simply too strong that there is no CEO in the world that can keep (EUV)-foundry within an IDM-structure/environment?

1748808008807.jpeg


https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-semiconductor-foundries-by-revenue-share/
 
I was just reading this analysis of capital heavy to capital light investment strategy at a PE firm. They love taking heavy capital from firms, turning them into Red Lobster. Followed by bankruptcy. And that theme is so dominant in some circles. It is at the heart of the problem the USA is having reindustrializing. Intel is a microcosm of this.

If Intel were to lighten, their P/E multiple could rise, because heavy assets are a drag on P/E. This is the “sell the foundry” thesis.

It takes a deep pool of committed capital to slog along for the next 10 years slowly winning customers. There is no silver bullet. TSMC will surely fight back, with cornered animal ferocity, if Intel nears conversion of a big customer like Apple. TSMC holds most cards.

Maybe there are pools of capital in Asia, which does seem more inclined than USA to capital-heavy business models, that Lip Tan knows and can influence, which will be patient enough for the Intel “reinindustrialization” to occur. If so, it would be a major shift in how financial markets work. Intel’s board does not seem patient though. I sense a change in structure, soon, will be necessary for Intel to make it.
 
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I understand your point about ecosystem and having just one customer but Intel Foundry already has a large volume customer which is Intel Products. If they can get another large volume customer like Apple or Qualcomm, it goes long way to help Intel Foundry's financials to work, so that they can stay in the game for long term. Also recognition as a serious player to gain trust from other customers. I think that is what is meant here.

My point is how would he know? Either way he is wrong.

Intel Foundry has no chance at getting a big customer because they do not have the capacity to handle a big customer nor do they have the ability to manage a big customer like Apple or Nvidia or Qualcomm. Think long term, Intel Foundry needs to get some business from several of the top ten semiconductor companies so they can develop into big customers while Intel Foundry develops the capacity and infrastructure to handle big customers.

The foundry business is a marathon not a sprint. This is where Pat Gelsinger failed. He sprinted and came up short. Lip-Bu will not bet the company on one big external customer. Just my opinion of course but at least I have some semiconductor experience to back it up.
 
Intel Foundry has no chance at getting a big customer because they do not have the capacity to handle a big customer nor do they have the ability to manage a big customer like Apple or Nvidia or Qualcomm. Think long term, Intel Foundry needs to get some business from several of the top ten semiconductor companies so they can develop into big customers while Intel Foundry develops the capacity and infrastructure to handle big customers.
Ah okay, I understand now.
 
My point is how would he know? Either way he is wrong.

Intel Foundry has no chance at getting a big customer because they do not have the capacity to handle a big customer nor do they have the ability to manage a big customer like Apple or Nvidia or Qualcomm. Think long term, Intel Foundry needs to get some business from several of the top ten semiconductor companies so they can develop into big customers while Intel Foundry develops the capacity and infrastructure to handle big customers.

The foundry business is a marathon not a sprint. This is where Pat Gelsinger failed. He sprinted and came up short. Lip-Bu will not bet the company on one big external customer. Just my opinion of course but at least I have some semiconductor experience to back it up.
It might be prudent to remember how TSMC started in 1987. Not only were they nowhere near the leading edge, they were picking up scraps from companies looking to outsource low-margin manufacturing and mostly ignored by large industry players. But that's how they built their customer-centric approach and long-term partnerships.

We keep talking about Intel picking up a "whale" customer, but (in my opinion) that's shortcutting the approach they should be taking. If you think about some of TSMC's largest customers (Nvidia, Apple, Mediatek, etc.), they grew with TSMC through mutual partnerships. Since pivoting to foundry in 2021, I'm surprised Intel hasn't built any of those types of partnerships. How are you going to land a "whale" if you can't convince a "minnow"? Hopefully Lip-Bu will be different.
 
It might be prudent to remember how TSMC started in 1987. Not only were they nowhere near the leading edge, they were picking up scraps from companies looking to outsource low-margin manufacturing and mostly ignored by large industry players. But that's how they built their customer-centric approach and long-term partnerships.

We keep talking about Intel picking up a "whale" customer, but (in my opinion) that's shortcutting the approach they should be taking. If you think about some of TSMC's largest customers (Nvidia, Apple, Mediatek, etc.), they grew with TSMC through mutual partnerships. Since pivoting to foundry in 2021, I'm surprised Intel hasn't built any of those types of partnerships. How are you going to land a "whale" if you can't convince a "minnow"? Hopefully Lip-Bu will be different.

Exactly, thank you, this is the point I was trying to make.

If I was Lip-Bu I would be honest with customers and say we need your business for the greater good of the semiconductor industry and here is a list of reasons why:

INtel Foundry Breakthroughs 2025.jpg

It is not a race with only one horse. If there is no race technology will not advance fast enough to sustain the world. AI is the best example. With the help of leading edge semiconductors AI will solve so many problems, some of which we do not even know we have.
 
It might be prudent to remember how TSMC started in 1987. Not only were they nowhere near the leading edge, they were picking up scraps from companies looking to outsource low-margin manufacturing and mostly ignored by large industry players. But that's how they built their customer-centric approach and long-term partnerships.

We keep talking about Intel picking up a "whale" customer, but (in my opinion) that's shortcutting the approach they should be taking. If you think about some of TSMC's largest customers (Nvidia, Apple, Mediatek, etc.), they grew with TSMC through mutual partnerships. Since pivoting to foundry in 2021, I'm surprised Intel hasn't built any of those types of partnerships. How are you going to land a "whale" if you can't convince a "minnow"? Hopefully Lip-Bu will be different.
Actually, that is what is Intel has been doing even before Lip Bu Tan. They have a bunch of small wins for 18A like Amazon & Microsoft etc. They have packaging wins too per management commentary. But they need wafer volume through their foundry to make fab economics to work. That volume can be either a 1 large high volume customer like Daniel Newman said or multiple small volume customers as Danniel Nenni said.
 
Exactly, thank you, this is the point I was trying to make.

If I was Lip-Bu I would be honest with customers and say we need your business for the greater good of the semiconductor industry and here is a list of reasons why:

View attachment 3219
It is not a race with only one horse. If there is no race technology will not advance fast enough to sustain the world. AI is the best example. With the help of leading edge semiconductors AI will solve so many problems, some of which we do not even know we have.
There is advancement in lithography despite a monopoly and keep in mind that SMIC is always lurking around to catch up once they develop indigenous EUV. I know that Intel would use this pitch but not sure if the fabless world would buy it.
 
Actually, that is what is Intel has been doing even before Lip Bu Tan. They have a bunch of small wins for 18A like Amazon & Microsoft etc. They have packaging wins too per management commentary. But they need wafer volume through their foundry to make fab economics to work. That volume can be either a 1 large high volume customer like Daniel Newman said or multiple small volume customers as Daniel Nenni said.

Sorry, 18A does not have a bunch of small wins. From what I have heard customers will wait for 18A-P for tape-outs.

If you are basing your information on what Pat Gelsinger said that is a mistake. Let's wait until Lip-Bu says it. It will be interesting to see what Samsung says this week at their event. From what I have heard amongst the ecosystem there have been zero external tape-outs at Intel 18A or Samsung 2nm and believe me I ask. I do not know about packaging wins, I only track design starts and tape-outs.

It is hard to keep a semiconductor secret these days but you never know. I was quite shocked at the amount of TSMC N2 tape-outs. I did not expect them to outpace N3 so clearly I miss counted on that one.
 
From what I have heard amongst the ecosystem there have been zero external tape-outs at Intel 18A or Samsung 2nm and believe me I ask. I do not know about packaging wins, I only track design starts and tape-outs.
There's SF2 tapeouts but I heard the yield is still low.
 
There is advancement in lithography despite a monopoly and keep in mind that SMIC is always lurking around to catch up once they develop indigenous EUV. I know that Intel would use this pitch but not sure if the fabless world would buy it.

EUV advancement has been painfully slow in my opinion. Competition would certainly have sped it up. I attend SPIE and the ASML EUV presentations were comical back then. "EUV is coming, no seriously EUV is coming, EUV is almost here, EUV is right around the corner...." The ASML presenters even made a joke about it after a while. And this was when there were a lot of potential EUV customers. For HNA-EUV the potential customer list is a fraction of EUV. I do not see HNA-EUV competition coming anytime soon, if ever.

There's SF2 tapeouts but I heard the yield is still low.

Sorry, I meant tape-outs outside of the Korean press. :ROFLMAO: Seriously, I know of none in the US. Samsung internal and maybe one or two in South Korea.

Low yield is a common problem with Samsung Foundry ever since 10nm. No reputable company is going to risk a high running chip with the SF2 PDK until it is in HVM, my opinion. The Samsung SAFE event is next week. Maybe there will be some good SF2 news.
 
Sorry, 18A does not have a bunch of small wins. From what I have heard customers will wait for 18A-P for tape-outs.

If you are basing your information on what Pat Gelsinger said that is a mistake. Let's wait until Lip-Bu says it. It will be interesting to see what Samsung says this week at their event. From what I have heard amongst the ecosystem there have been zero external tape-outs at Intel 18A or Samsung 2nm and believe me I ask. I do not know about packaging wins, I only track design starts and tape-outs.

It is hard to keep a semiconductor secret these days but you never know. I was quite shocked at the amount of TSMC N2 tape-outs. I did not expect them to outpace N3 so clearly I miss counted on that one.
Well Intel Foundry is not only 18A. They have customers on Intel 16 which is Mediatek product iirc. UMC/Intel 12 might bring customers as UMC indicates they accelerated this due to customer request. Intel is making some 18A chip for DoD iirc. What about Amazon 18A network fabric chip and Microsoft also announced they are making 18A chip. CFO recently said committed volume is less not that they lack customers on 18A. Also there is a rumor that OpenAI is making a asic chip let on 18A. Faraday recently announced very positive things about 18A. They were supposed to be working a chip on 18A. These are the ones on top of my head.

Also 18A-P is just 18A+ with 8% perf/watt improvement. It's the same node with probably more mature IP ecosystem.

I wonder who are they referring to here on this slide?
 

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Well Intel Foundry is not only 18A. They have customers on Intel 16 which is Mediatek product iirc. UMC/Intel 12 might bring customers as UMC indicates they accelerated this due to customer request. Intel is making some 18A chip for DoD iirc. What about Amazon 18A network fabric chip and Microsoft also announced they are making 18A chip. CFO recently said committed volume is less not that they lack customers on 18A. Also there is a rumor that OpenAI is making a asic chip let on 18A. Faraday recently announced very positive things about 18A. They were supposed to be working a chip on 18A. These are the ones on top of my head.

Also 18A-P is just 18A+ with 8% perf/watt improvement. It's the same node with probably more mature IP ecosystem.

I wonder who are they referring to here on this slide?

dkr1986 said: Actually, that is what is Intel has been doing even before Lip Bu Tan. They have a bunch of small wins for 18A like Amazon & Microsoft etc.

Sorry, I was talking about 18A and external customers. I did hear about some DoD stuff but those folks can keep secrets. Hopefully we will hear about 18A tape-outs on an investor call or press releases but I doubt it will be in 2025.
 
It might be prudent to remember how TSMC started in 1987. Not only were they nowhere near the leading edge, they were picking up scraps from companies looking to outsource low-margin manufacturing and mostly ignored by large industry players. But that's how they built their customer-centric approach and long-term partnerships.

We keep talking about Intel picking up a "whale" customer, but (in my opinion) that's shortcutting the approach they should be taking. If you think about some of TSMC's largest customers (Nvidia, Apple, Mediatek, etc.), they grew with TSMC through mutual partnerships. Since pivoting to foundry in 2021, I'm surprised Intel hasn't built any of those types of partnerships. How are you going to land a "whale" if you can't convince a "minnow"? Hopefully Lip-Bu will be different.
Ironically Intel was the first US customer for TSMC.
IMO Intel foundry should get commitmemt from Intel Products before onboarding Foundry Customers there is no point when you yourself source from External for majority of your current products.
 
EUV advancement has been painfully slow in my opinion. Competition would certainly have sped it up. I attend SPIE and the ASML EUV presentations were comical back then. "EUV is coming, no seriously EUV is coming, EUV is almost here, EUV is right around the corner...." The ASML presenters even made a joke about it after a while. And this was when there were a lot of potential EUV customers. For HNA-EUV the potential customer list is a fraction of EUV. I do not see HNA-EUV competition coming anytime soon, if ever.

Competition or collaboration to push advancement, how to find the proper balance?

EUV advancement was for a long time a (applied) research/science problem and much less an engineering problem. Specifically the science of how to make enough EUV photons, the EUV source power. Besides ASML there was no-one able to keep "the global EUV research world" together to work on this EUV photon source issue, partially because of ASML's huge R&D resources (from the DUV quasi-monopoly margins).

Other factors were perhaps that ASML is based in a small country, NL, with an open collaborative culture:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12685-020-00263-3
According to a popular Dutch theory, water has shaped the Dutch national identity. The Dutch fight against the water would have stimulated perseverance, ingenuity, cooperation and an egalitarian and democratic society. Despite the long water management history of the Netherlands, water became an important part of the self-images of the nation only in the eighteenth Century. In the 1780s the idea that the Dutch had wrung their country from the sea became popular.

There are some interesting youtube videos with the key-players at ASML during that time of say a 20+ year EUV-period of 1997 till 2019. Jos Benschop was the "first" real scientist joining ASML in 1997, see his historic perspective here:

And then how EUV moved from lab to fab here:
See the discussion around 7 minutes on how ASML had to work hard to keep the trust of their main EUV customers (Intel, Samsung and TSMC) that a 250 Watt EUV source was going to get to the Fab someday: transparency and small steps.......

Now at SPIE-2025 ASML has presented a 740 Watt EUV source power and their EUV-source research is moving to a 3-pulse LPP-Sn plasma EUV-source with a feasible (engineering) path to 1000 Watt EUV-source in a few years:
https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/13424/3052048/Evolution-of-EUV-light-source-architecture-for-continued-advancements-in/10.1117/12.3052048.full

To me, in a way, TSMC (that was incubated with Dutch support from Philips) also fosters such an open collaborative culture as it is based on a small island. For TSMC and Taiwan the threat is perhaps less the fight against the water, but more the surrounding geopolitical forces.

The US culture is perhaps more based on conquering, sports and winning "the game" from your opponent, whatever the game is. Collaboration, open innovation and "shared pain & shared gain" seem to be more deeply ingrained in Dutch and Taiwan's culture, than in US's culture?

It's quite amazing to see these days how TSMC and NVIDIA are very outward oriented and building their global alliances among customers and suppliers. Intel is fighting for survival, inward looking to its business structure and culture.

As others here on semiwiki have remarked, Intel (Foundry) needs lots and lots of capital, many many years of patience focused on solid execution and perhaps a different structure. As a leading-edge foundry just to perhaps become a distanced nr.2 in 5-10 years from now.

Will this goal of (perhaps) becoming a distant nr. 2 as (EUV)-foundry be enough as a motivation for Intel's stakeholders? Only the future will tell.........
 
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