TSMC has sought to engage Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, and Broadcom in talks about a potential joint venture to operate Intel’s foundry division.
According to a report from Reuters, under the terms of the proposal being put forward by the Taiwanese chipmaker, it’s seeking a partner in order to ensure it doesn’t own more than 50 percent of Intel’s foundry operations.
However, while Reuters cited four sources that claimed a number of companies had expressed an interest in buying parts of Intel, two of those sources said Intel had rejected the idea of separating its chip design unit from its foundry unit division.
In late September 2024, Intel reportedly rejected an offer from Arm to acquire the company’s product division after the British chip company made a “high-level inquiry” but was ultimately told the unit wasn’t for sale.
Reuters said Intel, TSMC, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm declined to comment, Broadcom did not respond to requests for comment.
Reports first surfaced in February 2025 claiming that Broadcom and TSMC were weighing up plans to acquire some of Intel’s assets. However, while it was originally claimed that the potential acquisition was at the request of Trump administration officials, it later emerged that President Trump was unlikely to approve of a foreign company operating Intel’s US factories, given his repeated criticism of Taiwan over the issue of chip manufacturing.
Trump has previously claimed that Taiwan “stole [the US’] chip business” and now accounts for “about 98 percent of the chip business” – Taiwanese chip companies produce about 60 percent of the world’s chips, but more than 90 percent of leading-edge chips, including Nvidia’s data center GPUs – pledging to “return production” of computer chips and semiconductors to the United States by imposing a “100 percent tax” on their overseas production.
Reuters said any deal of the kind being proposed by TSMC would need to be approved by the Trump administration before it is finalized. The White House did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Intel decoupled its Foundry Services business from the company last year, with then-CEO Gelsinger telling staff in a September 2024 memo that Intel Foundry would now operate as “an independent subsidiary inside of Intel” in order to provide “external foundry customers and suppliers with clearer separation and independence from the rest of Intel.”
Gelsinger ‘retired’ from Intel in December 2024, and in January 2025, the company posted its third consecutive quarterly loss, with fourth-quarter revenue down seven percent year-on-year (YoY) to $14.3 billion, whilst full-year revenue declined by two percent YoY to $53.1 billion.
In a post on X (formally Twitter) on March 11, Intel interim co-CEO David Zinsner wrote: “Thank you POTUS, for meeting with Tech CEO Council & for your leadership in driving American innovation. Intel looks forward to collaborating with your administration to strengthen US technology and semiconductor manufacturing leadership.”
Earlier this month, former Intel CEO Craig Barrett penned an op-ed in Fortune where he claimed that splitting off its foundry business would not solve the company’s problems. Rather, Barrett suggested Intel should focus all its efforts on developing a technology that would allow it to compete with TSMC.