foundry

Born out of a partnership with IBM, it has raised billions of dollars to build Japan's first cutting-edge chip foundry in decades.

The foundry business involves contract-based manufacturing of chips designed by other companies.

M’Saad said that logic and foundry orders—those from customers seeking to produce the integrated circuits that power smartphones, computers and other electronic devices—had improved lately.

Once the dominant player by far in PC chips, Intel lagged far behind rivals in the AI boom and struggled to produce a return on large investments in its foundry business.

Meanwhile, due to long lead times in foundry construction and the complexity of semiconductor supply chains, supply often lags behind demand, the economist says.