Ohio Chip Fab Tests U.S. Manufacturing Capacity

Intel crews installed the first major structural truss at the company’s chip fabrication plant in New Albany, Ohio, marking a new construction phase for a project whose schedule has slipped. The factory is meant to make chips for outside customers, but Intel still needs those customers to make the investment pay off.

The Ohio build-out

Intel announced the Ohio factory in 2022 and first expected it to begin delivering chips in 2025. The company has since delayed the timeline and now aims to finish construction in 2030. Intel plans a second fab at the site, just northeast of Columbus, with completion expected in 2031.

The project is part of Intel’s effort to make chips for outside customers, a build-out launched under former CEO Pat Gelsinger. When Lip-Bu Tan took the helm in 2025, he adopted a more cautious turnaround strategy: he would wait for customer demand before moving ahead with ambitious fab plans. The construction milestone shows progress at the site. It doesn’t answer who will use the factory’s capacity.

“This represents another significant step toward expanded U.S. leading-edge semiconductor capacity,” Intel Foundry head Naga Chandrasekaran wrote on the company’s website Wednesday. Intel’s plan puts the Ohio factory within its push to expand U.S. chipmaking, while the revised schedule leaves the site years behind its original 2025 delivery target.

Customers remain uncertain

In September, reports said SK Hynix, the world’s leading maker of high-bandwidth memory, could partner with Intel in Ohio to lease foundry space for memory-chip production. Neither company confirmed plans. That possible arrangement remains unconfirmed, and Intel still needs customers to make the Ohio investment pay off.

Intel faces the same challenge in Arizona. By late 2025, the company had started high-volume production at its Arizona chip fab, making its most advanced 18A chips. Intel hasn’t secured a major external customer for those chips and uses them for its own processors. Chandrasekaran said Wednesday that Intel expects operations at its next Arizona fab to begin by the end of 2028.

Competition for production space

Intel’s push for customers follows major delays with its 7- and 10-nanometer nodes, which helped drive the stock’s worst year ever in 2024. Customers have been reluctant to commit again since. Record demand for artificial intelligence chips may give Intel an opening, as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. can’t make chips quickly enough.

Competition for production space on TSMC’s factory lines is “extremely fierce,” even for Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Apple and Broadcom, according to Mizuho Securities analyst Jordan Klein. TechInsights analyst Dan Hutcheson said Intel could give customers another source for chip production. “People want a second source to be able to twist TSMC’s arm and keep them honest on pricing,” Hutcheson said. “All the big ones have been testing there.”

The Ohio fab’s commercial prospects depend on customers committing to Intel production, not just on construction progress. Intel has reached high-volume production in Arizona, but it hasn’t secured a major external customer for its Arizona-made 18A chips. In Ohio, neither company has confirmed the reported possibility of a deal with SK Hynix. Intel aims to complete the first Ohio fab in 2030 and the second in 2031.