Oversize #29: Intel’s plan to reclaim chipmaker crown by 2025

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Editor's note: A decade ago, Intel was worth $118 billion, $40 billion more than Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Combined. Today, Intel is up to nearly $220 billion. However, the others total up to $1.1 trillion. What changed?  A lot actually, and I wrote about it in March when Intel unveiled its ambitious IDM 2.0 plan—a throwback to Intel’s model as an integrated device manufacturer. The plan involved more outsourcing to the company’s chip-manufacturing rivals, including TSMC and Samsung, over the next couple of years as well as setting up a standalone foundry business (the foundry market is expected to hit $100 billion by 2025) with two chip-fabrication facilities, or fabs, to boost its capabilities to make chips designed by other companies. Problems aplenty Intel’s woes date back several years. But the company almost reached its nadir in 2020. The company had been losing ground to fast-rising competitors in the mobile devices space such as semiconductor design company Arm Ltd, as well as Qualcomm Inc. and longtime rival AMD. Last year, Nvidia Corp., the graphics chip maker, …