Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan Has Talked Collaboration With AMD's Lisa Su

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has spoken directly with AMD chief Lisa Su about potential areas of cooperation between the two companies, adding a new chapter to a rivalry that has already produced the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group and joint AI software work. Tan did not detail the discussed areas publicly, but the revelation came in an October 24 fireside chat with Jimmy Cheng, president of the Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association, a recording of which is circulating online.

The talks land at a delicate moment. Tan is rebuilding Intel around custom silicon, foundry services and workload-specific processors, and he framed collaboration as one lever among many.

What did Tan say about the turnaround?

Tan laid out plans to rebuild Intel's CPU business, develop chips tailored to specific customer workloads, and pull more customers into Intel Foundry. Intel has historically built its business around its own processor roadmaps. Tan says that must change.

"We have to reclaim the leadership in CPU. That is something that I am very determined to do," Tan said.

He pointed to Intel's Xeon processors as one area where the customer-first approach is already shifting, alongside continued development of GPUs and accelerators. He was blunt about Intel's old habits.

"Intel is so proud they never want to modify for customer needs," he said. "I'm modifying it for customer needs, and so that, I think, to me, is a fast-growing area, and I'm double, triple down on it."

Beyond CPUs, Tan named four growth bets:

• Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs)
• Co-packaged optics (CPO)
• Physical AI
• Advanced packaging

He wants two or three of these areas to eventually contribute roughly 10% of Intel's revenue each. That's a target, not a forecast, and Tan offered no timeline for hitting it.

Where does the foundry stand?

The foundry numbers are the most concrete part of the story. Tan said Intel's 18A manufacturing process has reached volume production. Development of the next-generation 14A node, he added, is progressing strongly.

Intel has already shipped version 0.5 of the 14A process design kit, the bundle of technical information and tools chip designers need to build products on the node. Version 0.9 comes next, followed by version 1.0 for volume production in early 2027.

"We have multiple customers [who] really want us to really scale their business," Tan said, referring to foundry interest. He did not name those customers or disclose order sizes. In January, Intel had two prospective customers evaluating 14A test chips, with firm supplier decisions expected between the second half of 2026 and the first half of 2027.

Tan stressed that foundry work is a trust business as much as a technology business. Customers hand over wafers that become products their own revenue depends on, so missed deadlines carry real costs.

"The moment we take on the foundry, take on the wafer is a lot of responsibility to make them successful," he said.

He recalled one customer who waited six to eight months, hoping Tan would become CEO, before presenting 15 areas where Intel had fallen short. Tan said he worked through the problems individually, after which the customer agreed to deepen its relationship with Intel.

Is Intel–AMD cooperation actually new?

Not really. In October 2024, Intel and AMD founded the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group with other technology companies to coordinate improvements to the x86 instruction set architecture and simplify support for both companies' processors across hardware and software.

That cooperation has since extended into AI software. Last week it emerged that AMD is integrating its ZenDNN optimizations into Intel's open-source oneDNN library, unifying the companies' CPU optimization work for PyTorch AI inference under a common software path. The pair have also collaborated on Advanced Matrix Extensions and other x86 capabilities through the advisory group — cooperating on shared technologies while still competing for every customer.

For now, neither company has announced a new agreement arising from the Tan–Su discussions. But with 14A customer decisions due between late 2026 and mid-2027, and Tan's custom-silicon push taking shape, the competitive dynamics between the two x86 giants could look very different within two years.