Intel Foundry secures Fortinet as ASIC customer for custom silicon production
Intel's struggling foundry business gains credibility with its first major external customer, signaling progress in the company's costly pivot toward contract chip manufacturing.
Foundry win validates multibillion-dollar strategy
Intel announced that Fortinet, the network security hardware manufacturer, will use Intel Foundry Services to produce custom ASICs for its firewall and security appliances. The deal represents Intel's first publicly disclosed external foundry customer of significant scale, addressing persistent doubts about whether the chipmaker could attract business beyond its own product divisions.
Intel has invested tens of billions of dollars building foundry capacity as part of CEO Pat Gelsinger's strategy to compete with TSMC and Samsung in contract manufacturing. Until now, the foundry unit has primarily served Intel's own chip designs, with few confirmed external customers willing to commit production volumes.
Custom silicon for security appliances
Fortinet designs custom ASICs to accelerate packet inspection, threat detection, and encryption tasks in its hardware. Moving this production to Intel Foundry allows the security vendor to control its silicon supply chain while potentially reducing dependence on Asian foundries.
The partnership follows broader industry trends toward custom silicon for specialized workloads. Cloud providers and infrastructure companies increasingly design purpose-built chips rather than relying solely on general-purpose processors.
Foundry business remains loss-making
Despite the Fortinet announcement, Intel Foundry Services continues to operate at a loss as the company builds out fabrication capacity and process technology. The division reported billions in operating losses in recent quarters as Intel races to catch TSMC's manufacturing lead.
Intel's foundry strategy depends on securing additional high-volume customers beyond Fortinet to justify its capital expenditures. The company has opened facilities in Arizona, Ohio, and internationally, but utilization rates remain below commercial viability without a broader customer base.