--- title: "Intel surges over 14% in pre-market trading: Reports say Google plans to order three million AI chips, while NVIDIA tests its 18A process" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/289062707.md" description: "Affected by a comprehensive capacity crunch at TSMC, giants such as Google and NVIDIA are listing Intel as an alternative foundry. Google has placed an order with it for more than 3 million TPUs in 2028. Meanwhile, NVIDIA is testing Intel's 18A process and EMIB packaging technology for its new architecture in 2028. SK Hynix is also conducting compatibility tests, marking a significant breakthrough window for Intel's foundry business" datetime: "2026-06-08T13:22:55.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/289062707.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/289062707.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/289062707.md) --- # Intel surges over 14% in pre-market trading: Reports say Google plans to order three million AI chips, while NVIDIA tests its 18A process Amid the flood of demand for artificial intelligence chips, TSMC is struggling to cope, inadvertently handing a strategic opportunity to Intel. According to The Information on the 8th, citing four people familiar with the matter, **several major AI chip design companies, including Google and NVIDIA, have quietly begun to include Intel as an alternative foundry.** Google has formally placed an order with Intel to produce more than 3 million Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) in 2028. Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner stated during the April earnings call that demand for advanced packaging services had jumped from the previously expected hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars annually. Following the news, Intel's U.S. shares rose more than 14% in pre-market trading. NVIDIA has not yet placed a formal order but has begun testing Intel's advanced packaging technology and its most cutting-edge 18A manufacturing process. These efforts are directed toward NVIDIA's next-generation GPU architecture, codenamed "Feynman," which is expected to be released in 2028. Meanwhile, SK Hynix, one of the world's largest suppliers of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), is also testing the compatibility of its memory with Intel's packaging technology. If the tests are successful, it will further endorse Intel's foundry qualifications. TSMC CEO C.C. Wei admitted at last Thursday's shareholder meeting that global chip supply would fail to keep pace with the growth of AI demand in the coming years. Even as TSMC continues to expand capacity in the United States, it will struggle to meet the needs of American customers. It is precisely this supply gap that provides Intel, long lagging behind TSMC, with its biggest business breakthrough window in years. ## Google Takes the Lead, Locking in Intel for TPU Mass Production Google has gone the furthest in this shift. According to reports, **after months of testing Intel's advanced packaging technology, Google has placed an order with Intel to manufacture more than 3 million TPUs in 2028.** TPUs are Google's self-developed AI chips used for training and running AI models. Currently, Google has begun selling TPU computing power to companies such as Apple and Meta Platforms. According to Morgan Stanley's latest forecast, Google expects to produce more than 6 million TPUs between 2027 and 2028. The order outsourced to Intel accounts for about half of the 2028 production volume. ## NVIDIA Tests 18A and Packaging Technology, Pointing to 2028 Flagship Architecture NVIDIA's evaluation of Intel is still in the assessment phase but has taken concrete steps. **NVIDIA is testing whether Intel's technology can be used to produce a new type of processor that integrates four graphics chips into a single package, work directly related to the Feynman series of GPUs.** NVIDIA is simultaneously conducting early trials of Intel's 18A manufacturing process in the form of Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) tape-outs—where multiple customers place small designs on the same wafer to verify technical feasibility while sharing costs. The 18A process is widely considered by the industry to be comparable to the upcoming 2-nanometer technologies from TSMC and Samsung Electronics. Intel has currently used 18A for the production of its own personal computer and server processors as an internal validation before seeking external large-scale customers. ## TSMC Capacity Fully Strained, Intel's Cost May Offer Competitive Advantage TSMC's capacity pressure is concentrated in two areas: its leading-edge wafer fabrication lines are fully booked, and its advanced packaging lines, which combine AI processors with high-bandwidth memory (HBM), are also in short supply. Tightness in the packaging sector has been evident since 2023. As AI chip designs increasingly adopt multi-chip stitching architectures, the bottleneck has continued to intensify. Taking NVIDIA's flagship Blackwell chip as an example, it integrates two processors and high-bandwidth memory within the same package, making packaging a core link determining chip data transmission speeds. According to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, NVIDIA has now surpassed Apple to become TSMC's largest customer. Intel's packaging technology is called EMIB (Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge). It solves the same problem as TSMC's CoWoS technology but through a different path: **CoWoS uses larger silicon layers to connect processors and memory, whereas EMIB embeds smaller silicon bridges only where needed within the package, potentially offering lower costs for certain chip designs.** To enhance customer confidence in supply security, Intel partnered last year with Amkor Technology, one of the world's largest outsourced packaging companies, to expand EMIB capacity in South Korea, Portugal, and Arizona, while providing customers with an alternative supply source outside of Intel's own facilities. SK Hynix is currently testing the compatibility of its high-bandwidth memory with Intel's packaging solutions—once this memory giant confirms the technology's reliability, it will significantly boost the overall confidence of AI chip designers in Intel's packaging solutions. ## The Opportunity Is Real, But Rebuilding Trust Remains the Biggest Test Although the potential orders are exciting, Intel still faces severe challenges. Migrating important AI chip orders from TSMC to a new supplier requires the latter to prove its ability to deliver advanced technology at scale and with high yields. It took TSMC years to earn the trust of top chip design companies like NVIDIA, Google, and Apple. Intel's foundry business history has not been smooth. Former CEO Pat Gelsinger launched Intel Foundry Services in 2021, but the company subsequently missed several manufacturing milestones, and the foundry division recorded operating losses for consecutive years. Gelsinger himself was forced to step down at the end of 2024. Furthermore, Intel still relies on TSMC to manufacture some of its own chips, highlighting the limitations of its own manufacturing capabilities. Intel's breakthrough in advanced packaging may be the most realistic. If it can gain a foothold here and then extend into the core battlefield of wafer fabrication, it would mark a substantive return of this chip giant to the foundry sector. 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