Intel has hit a milestone in the construction of its massive chip fabrication plant in New Albany, Ohio, that's running at least five years behind schedule, a delay that's coincided with soaring demand for advanced chips.
On Wednesday, Intel announced that crews have installed the first major structural truss in Ohio, which means the next part of the construction has finally begun.
"This represents another significant step toward expanded U.S. leading-edge semiconductor capacity," Intel Foundry head Naga Chandrasekaran wrote in a post on the company's website on Wednesday.
Intel still needs customers to make the investment pay off.
In September, reports surfaced that the world's leading maker of high-bandwidth memory, SK Hynix, could team up with Intel in Ohio to lease some foundry space to make memory chips at the new site. Neither company would confirm any plans.
When Intel first announced the Ohio factory in 2022, it was expected to start delivering chips in 2025. Intel pushed back that timeline, now aiming to finish construction in 2030. A second Ohio fab is also planned for completion in 2031 at the site, just northeast of Columbus.
The delay reflects a broader recalibration of Intel's foundry ambitions under CEO Lip-Bu Tan.
The Ohio factory is only one piece of Intel's ambitious build-out to start making chips for outside customers that began under former CEO Pat Gelsinger. When Tan took the helm in 2025, his turnaround strategy was more cautious, choosing to wait for customer demand before forging ahead with ambitious chip fab plans.
Still, by late 2025, Intel was in high-volume production at its Arizona chip fab, producing its most advanced 18A chips. On Wednesday, Chandrasekaran also announced that operations at its next fab in Arizona are expected to begin by the end of 2028.
But Intel has yet to land a major external customer for those 18A chips coming out of Arizona. Instead, Intel is using them to make its own processors for devices.
Once a dominant force in the chip manufacturing landscape, Intel hit major delays with its 7- and 10-nanometer nodes, triggering the stock's worst year ever in 2024. Customers have been reluctant to commit again since.
Now, Intel's window of opportunity may have arrived alongside record demand for AI, as leading chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. can't make chips fast enough. Even for the biggest chipmakers like Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Apple and Broadcom, "competition is extremely fierce," to get space on TSMC's factory lines, according to Mizuho Securities analyst Jordan Klein.
Intel could offer customers an alternative source for chip production, according to TechInsights analyst Dan Hutcheson.
"People want a second source to be able to twist TSMC's arm and keep them honest on pricing," Hutcheson said. "All the big ones have been testing there."
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