Intel Marks Ohio Fab Construction Milestone as Project Runs at Least Five Years Late
Intel marked a construction milestone at its Ohio chip plant, a project at least five years late amid soaring chip demand.
The Ohio project was announced in 2022 with expectations that it would begin delivering chips in 2025. Intel later pushed the timeline back and now aims to finish construction in 2030; a second fab at the site, northeast of Columbus, is planned for completion in 2031.
Naga Chandrasekaran, head of Intel Foundry, said in a post on the company’s website that the truss installation “represents another significant step toward expanded U.S. leading-edge semiconductor capacity.”
The delay reflects a broader recalibration of Intel’s foundry ambitions under CEO Lip-Bu Tan. The Ohio factory is one piece of the build-out to make chips for outside customers that began under former CEO Pat Gelsinger. When Tan took the helm in 2025, his turnaround strategy was more cautious, waiting for customer demand before forging ahead with ambitious fab plans.
Intel still needs customers to make the investment pay off. In September, reports surfaced that SK Hynix, the world’s leading maker of high-bandwidth memory, 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.
By late 2025, Intel was in high-volume production at its Arizona chip fab, producing its most advanced 18A chips. Chandrasekaran also said operations at Intel’s next fab in Arizona are expected to begin by the end of 2028. But Intel has yet to land a major external customer for the 18A chips coming out of Arizona and is instead using them to make its own processors for devices.
Intel, once a dominant force in chip manufacturing, 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.
Intel’s window of opportunity may have arrived alongside record demand for AI, as leading chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. cannot make chips fast enough. Mizuho Securities analyst Jordan Klein said competition for space on TSMC’s factory lines is “extremely fierce” even for the biggest chipmakers like Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Apple and Broadcom.
TechInsights analyst Dan Hutcheson said Intel could offer customers an alternative source for chip production. “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.”