TSMC flags Intel Foundry

Making chips for other companies is a manufacturing business, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. just told investors it now treats Intel Foundry as a serious rival. (investor.tsmc.com) On TSMC’s April 16, 2026 earnings call, Chief Executive C.C. Wei said the company views Intel as a “formidable” competitor and does “not underestimate them.” He made the remark while discussing the rules of the foundry business, where chip designers hire outside factories to build their processors. (investor.tsmc.com) TSMC made that warning from a position of strength. Its first-quarter 2026 revenue reached $35.90 billion, above its own guidance range of $34.6 billion to $35.8 billion, while gross margin came in at 66.2% and operating margin at 58.1%. (investor.tsmc.com, investor.tsmc.com) For the second quarter, TSMC guided revenue to $39.0 billion to $40.2 billion, with gross margin of 65.5% to 67.5% and operating margin of 56.5% to 58.5%. The company’s investor page shows that outlook implies year-over-year growth above 30% in U.S. dollar terms. (investor.tsmc.com) The backdrop is an artificial-intelligence buildout that still needs huge volumes of advanced chips and packaging. TSMC’s first-quarter revenue was up 40.6% from a year earlier, and net income rose 58.3% to NT$572.48 billion. (investor.tsmc.com) Intel has spent the past year trying to prove its foundry business can win outside customers, not just build Intel’s own chips. At Intel Foundry Direct Connect 2025, the company said it had engaged lead customers on its next process, Intel 14A, and had begun early wafers for the enhanced 18A-P variant. (intc.com) Intel also used its own products to show that 18A had moved from slides to silicon. At CES on January 5, 2026, Intel said its Core Ultra Series 3 processors were the first compute platform built on Intel 18A and would ship in more than 200 PC designs. (intc.com) Intel describes 18A as its latest foundry process and says it is ready for customer projects. The company says the node uses RibbonFET transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery, two manufacturing changes it says improve performance per watt and chip density versus Intel 3. (intel.com) TSMC is still the larger contract manufacturer by a wide margin, and its investor materials say it produced more than 17 million 12-inch-equivalent wafers in 2025 for hundreds of customers. But when the market leader starts naming a rival on an earnings call, it usually means the rivalry has moved from ambition to execution. (investor.tsmc.com, investor.tsmc.com)