Intel Foundry has secured a manufacturing partnership with cybersecurity hardware leader Fortinet to produce a next-generation security chip using Intel's foundry services. Announced on July 21, the agreement marks the clearest signal yet that Intel is positioning itself alongside industry leader TSMC as a competitive semiconductor manufacturer.

The deal makes Fortinet the first named corporate customer for Intel Foundry under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who assumed the role in March 2025. The announcement carries weight for a division that has been investing heavily in new fabrication capacity while working to narrow the gap with TSMC, which controls the majority of the global foundry market.

Process Technology and Strategic Significance

The chip will be manufactured using Intel's foundry processes, with the company's 18A node currently in production and its 14A technology scheduled for later this decade. By producing a security-focused chip on leading-edge silicon, Intel places its process technology directly into one of the fastest-growing segments of enterprise hardware, where demand for purpose-built network and security accelerators has surged alongside the expansion of cloud infrastructure and AI-driven threat detection.

Building a Portfolio Story

The Fortinet announcement builds on existing momentum from Microsoft, which previously disclosed plans to develop a custom chip design using Intel's 18A process. With two named clients spanning cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure, Intel Foundry gains a diversified customer portfolio—a key objective as it seeks to demonstrate that its fabs can serve external customers at scale, not just Intel's internal product groups.

Tan's strategy since taking the helm in March 2025 has centered on closing specific deals with named companies on specific process nodes. The Fortinet partnership aligns directly with that approach.

Geopolitical Advantages and Future Milestones

The cybersecurity hardware segment carries particular strategic weight. Governments and enterprises worldwide face growing pressure to reduce dependence on chips manufactured in geopolitically sensitive regions, a shift reinforced by policy initiatives such as the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act. Intel's manufacturing footprint in the United States and Europe provides a compliance and supply chain argument that TSMC, despite its technical leadership, cannot easily replicate.

Looking ahead, the 14A process node—positioned beyond the current 18A production line—will serve as the critical test of whether Intel can compete at the frontier of semiconductor manufacturing. The commitments from Fortinet and Microsoft on 18A provide Intel with both time and revenue to reach that milestone, while giving potential future customers tangible reference points for evaluating Intel's foundry reliability on advanced nodes.