Fortinet named first external customer for Intel 4 node
TL;DR
- Fortinet is a former TSMC customer; this is Intel's most concrete win yet of geopolitically motivated silicon spend redirected to a US fab.
- Intel 4's first named external customer is a security vendor, showing where Tan is building foundry momentum before any hyperscaler signs.
- Intel Foundry posted only $174M in external revenue last quarter; this deal's signaling value dwarfs its near-term financial weight.
Intel Foundry has been searching for a lighthouse external customer it can actually name, and on July 21 it got one. Intel and Fortinet announced a strategic collaboration to co-develop Fortinet's next-generation Security Processor 6, the custom ASIC that sits behind FortiGate firewalls. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan framed it as a demonstration of "Intel's semiconductor leadership and advanced design, packaging, and manufacturing capabilities," and Fortinet founder and CEO Ken Xie said the expanded relationship would help Fortinet "accelerate and strengthen our ASIC strategy."
The part the Intel press release does not spell out, but that Tom's Hardware reported, is the node: SP6 will be fabricated on Intel 4, the EUV process Intel had so far reserved for its own products. That makes Fortinet the first named external customer for Intel 4, and the first named cybersecurity customer of Intel Foundry. It is the kind of concrete proof point Intel has struggled to produce, and it lands with a company whose entire product story is that a purpose-built ASIC beats commodity x86 or Arm silicon inside a firewall.
Why this matters beyond the two companies: cybersecurity hardware buyers, especially in US federal and critical-infrastructure segments, have been asking for supply chain assurances that TSMC-fabricated competitors cannot easily match. The Register noted that while SP6 "won't use the latest chipmaking tech, it will be built in an American fab by an American company, offering a level of supply chain security." That is a real procurement lever, and Fortinet is the first firewall vendor to pull it publicly.
The honest caveats. Intel 4 is not 18A, and buyers should not assume SP6 will lead the industry on raw performance-per-watt. Intel explicitly declined to say when SP6 will actually ship, telling reporters that availability "will be announced at a later date." No contract value, wafer volume, or packaging arrangement has been disclosed, and it is not yet clear whether other security or networking vendors will follow Fortinet onto Intel 4.
What is worth watching is whether this becomes a template. If Lip-Bu Tan can turn one named cybersecurity anchor into two or three across networking silicon over the next year, Intel Foundry stops being a strategy deck and starts being a business.
What others are reporting
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The Register Read →
Frames the deal around US trusted-manufacturing politics and Intel's DARPA HIVE program and 9.9% government ownership stake, not chip specs.
Supply chain security is something Intel has leaned into as it has sought to reinvent itself from an integrated device manufacturer.
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CNBC Read →
Leads with CEO Lip-Bu Tan's turnaround narrative, positioning Fortinet as the first verifiable external win since his restructuring began.
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Tom's Hardware Read →
Leads on the Intel 4 process-node milestone, covering the first publicly named external tape-out on the node from a hardware engineering lens.
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ServeTheHome Read →
Anchors the deal in Fortinet's ASIC lineage (SP5, SOC4) and estimates SP6 touches a slice of Fortinet's roughly $2B hardware revenue stream.
For Intel, this is a great customer win, outside of the traditional AI space, that it is able to disclose.
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The Stack Read →
Leads with Intel Foundry's $174M external revenue last quarter, framing the deal as validation of an expensive restructuring rather than a scaled business.
The hardware company will co-develop Fortinet's Security Processor 6 chips and manufacture them using its Intel 4 process, in its first foundry deal with a security company.
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The Next Web Read →
Notes Intel 4 is not Intel's leading-edge node and sizes this against the $10B anchor deal Intel needs, calling the win symbolic ahead of earnings.
Originally reported by newsroom.intel.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Intel and Fortinet Co-Develop Security Processor 6 on Intel 4, Fortinet First Named External Customer for the Node