US President Donald Trump recently claimed that Taiwan's TSMC will double the size of its Arizona fab project, reviving attention on his goal of raising the US share of the global chip market to 50% before the end of his term. TSMC declined to comment on the report, but investors may press the company on the issue at its second-quarter 2026 earnings call.
Intel's own American playbook
While the main "made in America" semiconductor mission currently rests with TSMC, Intel, under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, is laying out a broader playbook — from technology transfers for Terafab to efforts to return to DRAM, as well as a September 2025 appearance with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang — that sketches an "American dream" for Intel, Terafab, and even Nvidia.
A two-track bet on DRAM and AI
Recent media reports said Intel is not only co-developing stacked-memory ZAM with SoftBank, but has also filed patents related to an XBM architecture. That underscores a two-track strategy aimed at both returning to DRAM and building out AI compute and storage capacity. After Elon Musk poached several Intel employees, Intel has also been in contact with SpaceX on the Terafab project.
The Terafab plan initially calls for US$55 billion in investment and two advanced-node fabs. Building it from the ground up would require Intel talent, construction support, and technology transfers — not necessarily limited to Intel's 14A logic process technology. Intel's new memory architecture would also become part of the Intel-Terafab alliance.
Memory as leverage
Notably, Musk explicitly listed memory chips as one of Terafab's production targets at a presentation, though the source of the IP remains unclear. With existing memory makers unlikely to license core IP to rivals, Intel's push back into DRAM has at least become a bargaining chip for Terafab.
Following the IBM-AMD blueprint
Neither Musk nor Tan has provided further details on the partnership. One possible model would resemble the old IBM-AMD technology transfer framework, under which Intel would provide Terafab with process flows, manufacturing IP, PDK design rules, and tool recipes through licensing, while retaining ownership of the underlying technology and collecting licensing or patent fees.
From pilot line to megafab, with Musk as a backstop
For Intel, supporting Terafab's buildout from one fab to two and then to a megafab campus would not require it to operate the fabs itself, but it could generate revenue from technology transfers. If Terafab's pilot line is validated, Intel could also fold its Ohio fab site into the Terafab system through a joint venture. These ideas were beyond Gelsinger's reach, but are being advanced by Tan as a major restructuring move.
Moreover, if Terafab ultimately fails to succeed independently, the odds of Musk making a further investment in Intel would rise. Intel's underused Ohio fab complex is large enough to support two advanced-node fabs, creating a mutually reinforcing "made in America" model between Intel's technology and Terafab's capacity.
Article translated by Charlene Chen and edited by Jerry Chen
