Intel held the Foundry Direct Connect Asia event in Seoul on the 24th of this month. This was the first time Intel held such an event outside the United States.Intel's Direct Connect event is similar to TSMC's technical seminars and Samsung's foundry forums, aiming to showcase its latest process technologies.
The Seoul event attracted many domestic and foreign fabless companies and ecosystem partners working with Intel foundry, including Arm, Cadence, Synopsys and Rambus.
It is worth noting that some companies currently relying on Samsung OEM, TSMC or UMC also attended the event,Including DeepX, Hyundai Mobis, LG Electronics, Preferred Networks, Rebellions, SK Hynix, and even Samsung LSI.
The companies' presence is seen as an effort to explore diversification of supply chains. Samsung, for example, typically makes advanced chips in-house but outsources some simple integrated circuits made at mature nodes.
In addition, SK Hynix and Samsung may be interested in manufacturing HBM4 memory base chips at Intel to attract customers who plan to use Intel's advanced packaging services.
According to Counterpoint Research, in the first quarter of 2025, TSMC held a 35.3% share of the foundry 2.0 market, Intel's 6.5%, and Samsung's foundry share of 5.9%.
Given TSMC's huge advantage in the foundry market, it's no surprise that Intel chose to target Samsung's customers first.
