- Intel Foundry Q2 2026 revenue hit $5.8 billion, up 32% year-over-year
- External customer revenue reached $174 million in Q1 2026
- Fortinet became first named Intel 4 foundry customer in July 2026
- TSMC holds 72% foundry market share versus Intel’s minimal presence
Intel Foundry landed Fortinet as its first publicly named external customer for the Intel 4 process in July 2026, three years after that node entered high-volume production. The deal covers Fortinet’s SP6 security processor for FortiGate firewalls and will be manufactured at Fab 34 in Ireland. External revenue in Q1 2026 reached just $174 million, a fraction of the division’s total revenue and a rounding error compared to TSMC’s dominance.
Revenue growth comes almost entirely from internal manufacturing
Intel Foundry’s second-quarter revenue of $5.8 billion represents a 32% increase from $4.4 billion a year earlier. But the growth comes almost entirely from internal Intel Products manufacturing. External revenue for all of 2025 was just $307 million, up from $159 million in 2024, against total foundry revenue of $17.8 billion and an operating loss of $10.3 billion.
In 2025, Intel’s key production fabs were in Oregon ramping Intel 18A, Arizona running Intel 7 and ramping 18A, Ireland producing Intel 4 and Intel 3, and Israel on Intel 7. Intel 18A, the company’s most advanced node, entered high-volume manufacturing in late 2025 and delivers improvements in performance per watt and density scaling over Intel 3, introducing RibbonFET and PowerVia breakthrough technologies. Yet actual customer tapeouts remain scarce.
TSMC holds 72% market share; Intel barely registers
TSMC holds 72.3% market share in the global foundry business while Samsung sits at 6.5%, according to TrendForce data from Q1 2026. TSMC manufactures chips for Amazon, AMD, Apple, Broadcom, Google, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Tesla and many others. Intel isn’t on that list as a foundry provider—it’s on it as a customer outsourcing its own chip production.
The gap isn’t just market share. Samsung’s foundry business has struggled with poor yields, with some sources reporting numbers as low as 50% compared to TSMC’s more than 90%. Intel has released no public yield data for 18A. The Fortinet deal provides credible social proof that makes the next foundry customer conversation easier, and Fortinet brings genuine unit volume even if each unit is not high-value. But volume from a single security processor doesn’t close a 72-point market share gap.
Intel’s manufacturing recovery is real—process nodes are shipping, fabs are ramping, and internal products are running. But the external foundry business model depends on trust built through years of delivering at scale for multiple customers across multiple nodes. Intel has proven it can build advanced transistors. It hasn’t yet proven it can run a foundry. Until named customers on 18A start shipping product in volume, the test remains incomplete.
Intel now offers nodes originally scoped for internal use only
Intel’s fiscal year 2024 annual report listed processes available to external customers as 18A, Intel 3, Intel 7, Intel 16, and a 12nm node co-developed with UMC—Intel 4 appeared nowhere on that list. At VLSI 2022, Intel disclosed it wasn’t building a high-density library for Intel 4 and that Intel 3 would be the first new node offered through Intel Foundry Services. The Fortinet deal on Intel 4 represents a shift: Intel is now willing to offer nodes it originally scoped for internal use only.
Fortinet claims 55% unit market share in firewalls with approximately six million FortiGates deployed, so the SP6 processor will see real production volume. Fortinet’s hardware business accounts for roughly 30% of its annual revenue from a hardware stream of approximately $2 billion per year, and SP6 is one chip within that segment—not the whole of it and not volume comparable to hyperscaler AI chip orders, so the deal will not shift Intel’s foundry revenue materially in 2026 or early 2027. It’s a reference win, not a revenue event.
Intel Foundry’s challenge isn’t technology—18A shipped on schedule with RibbonFET and PowerVia in production. The challenge is commercial. Foundry customers need multi-year yield data, reference designs, and evidence that Intel can support external products as reliably as TSMC does. Fortinet’s SP6 win on Intel 4 provides the first public proof point, but one security processor three years after node launch won’t change customer allocation decisions. Watch for 18A customer announcements with committed tapeout dates and production volumes. Until those appear, Intel Foundry remains a recovery story in manufacturing execution, not yet a competitive threat in the foundry market.
What is Intel 18A and why does it matter for foundry customers?
Intel 18A is Intel’s most advanced process node, featuring RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery—two innovations implemented simultaneously in a production foundry process for the first time. It entered high-volume manufacturing in late 2025 and delivers performance-per-watt and density improvements over Intel 3. For foundry customers, 18A represents Intel’s capability to compete with TSMC’s N2 node, but actual customer tapeouts and yield data remain limited.
How much external foundry revenue does Intel actually generate?
Intel Foundry generated $307 million in external revenue for all of fiscal year 2025, up from $159 million in 2024. In Q1 2026, external revenue was $174 million. This compares to total Intel Foundry revenue of $17.8 billion in 2025, meaning external customers represent less than 2% of the business. The rest comes from internal manufacturing for Intel’s own products.
Article Source: Intel Foundry Improves Execution, but External Customers Remain the Test
