Intel 14A attracts giants: Apple, Nvidia, Google and others test new node

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If this report is even close to being true, Intel could be on the cusp of a whole new and incredibly lucrative era for the company. It's claimed that pretty much all of the biggest players in US chip tech including Amazon, Apple, AMD, Google, Tesla, Microsoft, Nvidia and Qualcomm are evaluating Intel's upcoming 14A node.

The report comes from investment bank Piper Sandler (via WCCFTech ). "Foundry 14A datapoints bode well, awaiting anchor customer. All the big US customers (i.e. Amazon, Apple, AMD, Google, Tesla, Microsoft, NVDA, QCOM etc are evaluating Intel's 14A process, given: 1) technical datapoints trending better than expected. 2) Industry looking for alternative foundry / packaging suppliers to TSMC, given TSMC is sold-out through 2028. 3) On-shoring trends given political pressure.

"In late 2026 and early 2027, Intel needs to convert these to anchor foundry customer wins ahead of a 2028 ramp-up. We see the $20B share offering last month as an indicator of confidence in landing anchor customers.

"This should help fund the tooling cost of a 14A fab (20k wpm) which costs ~$10B. We note Fab-62 shell is almost completed, but still needs to be equipped," the Piper Sandler note said.

Aside from confirmation that one of the big drivers in all this is the desire to bring as much chip production back to the US as possible, another important tidbit is the $20 billion share offering. As Piper Sandler says, that should help towards funding a new generation of 14A fabs.

Moreover, Intel's CEO, Lip Bu Tan has previously made explicit that a firm indicator that the company has serious interest in its new 14A technology will be when the company starts spending on building out fabs.

"If we are unable to secure a significant external customer and meet important customer milestones for Intel 14A, we face the prospect that it will not be economical to develop and manufacture Intel 14A and successor leading-edge nodes on a go-forward basis.

"In such event, we may pause or discontinue our pursuit of Intel 14A and successor nodes and various of our manufacturing expansion projects," Tan said back in July last year .

More recently, the CEO indicated that 14A is on track, with early so-called "risk" production of intial chips slated for 2028, a timeline Intel thinks will make it directly comparable to the competition from Taiwanese megafab TSMC. "That is a major, major breakthrough," Tan said.

Just to put all this into context, Intel's 14A node is the next generation of its chip production technology. Notionally, the "14A" bit refers to the smallest size of elements within a chip produced on the node. In this case, that would be 14 angstroms, which is equivalent to 1.4 nm.

In reality, the actual size of elements within modern chips has become divorced from these marketing terms, with the reality typical three to four times larger than the advertised node class.

Apple is arguably the biggest possible prize for Intel as a potential fab customer. (Image credit: Apple) Likewise, these measurements don't line up neatly across vendors. In other words, TSMC's 2 nm isn't the same as Intel's 2 nm. So, while you might expect Intel's existing 18A node, which notionally means 1.8 nm, to be very similar to TSMC's N2 node, which again notionally indicates features measuring 2 nm, in practice most industry analysts put Intel 18A on a par with TSMC's older N3 or 3 nm node.

Exactly how Intel's 14A node compares to TSMC technology isn't clear. Lip Bu Tan's expectation of competitiveness with TSMC might be under the assumption that it's going up against TSMC N2. But maybe by 2028 it will be TSMC's next-gen A16 node that will be the competition.

Whatever the case, TSMC currently dominates the advanced customer chip manufacturing market. There's plenty of space for Intel to get involved. And if it really can secure even a fraction of that roll call of potential customers we mentioned up top, that would be incredibly good news for Intel.

The snag is that Intel announced its plan to pivot into customer manufacturing as opposed to purely using its fabs to produce in-house Intel designs way back in March 2021 under a different CEO . Here we are in the second half of 2026 and we are still waiting for Intel to announce that critical "anchor" customer that will make its fab business truly viable.