Intel’s struggling chip-making business got a boost Monday from a high-profile client: Amazon.
The announcement came after Intel said earlier in the day it would receive up to $3 billion in funding under the CHIPS and Science Act to manufacture chips for the military.
Intel Foundry and Amazon Web Services will coinvest in a custom chip design for the latter and “announced a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar framework,” according to a release.
“Specifically, Intel Foundry will produce an AI fabric chip for AWS on Intel 18A,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in the statement Monday.
Intel, once the world’s most dominant chipmaker, with a stranglehold on PCs and Macs, has struggled to keep up with the mobile computing wave and has been surpassed in market value by Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, both leaders in mobile chips.
And, of course, there’s Nvidia, which rode the subsequent AI boom to become one of the most valuable public companies in the world.
Intel’s partnership with AWS is part of the chipmaker’s attempt to play catch-up. The new deal, along with a $3 billion grant from the US government to boost domestic chip making and make chips for the US military, “demonstrates the continued progress we are making to build a world-class foundry business,” Intel said in the statement.
Intel is continuing to build plants in US states Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and Ohio but is pausing its production in Germany and Poland for about two years.
Intel shares jumped 6% in after-hours trading after the announcement.
Gelsinger also provided updates on the company’s goal to cut $10 billion by 2025. Intel has changed its business model to try to become a global chip manufacturer to rival Taiwan’s TSMC.
The note said the company is more than halfway through its goal to cut 15,000 employees by the end of the year and will notify more employees of layoffs in mid-October. It’s also planning to slash its global real estate footprint by about two-thirds by the end of 2024.
