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Intel 18A vs. Losses, TSMC CoWoS Crunch & Liquid Cooling Frontier
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Intel's foundry posts record revenue yet bleeds $2.1B — while TSMC's CoWoS supply gap and in-wafer liquid cooling signal the next hardware constraints. Today's briefing cuts through the numbers investors and engineers need to know.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Intel's foundry unit just posted its strongest revenue quarter on record, and it's still losing two-point-one billion dollars. That's the central tension in today's briefing, and it's worth holding in mind as we work through what actually happened and what it tells us about where this industry is heading.
The number that's keeping Intel's broader story intact is the data center AI segment, which posted two-point-five billion dollars in operating profit in Q2 and segment revenue of six-point-two-six billion dollars, up fifty-nine percent. That profit is covering most of the foundry losses.
Analyst sentiment reflects exactly this uncertainty. The stock trades at seventy-two times forward earnings, pricing in an earnings-per-share consensus of two-point-oh-four for twenty twenty-seven, up from one-point-five-one just ninety days ago.
Now to TSMC, where the strategic move this week is less about capacity and more about supply chain topology. TSMC opened its Baipu campus in Kaohsiung, not as a production facility, but as a dedicated supplier validation hub focused on materials qualification for CoWoS advanced packaging.
TSMC also announced plans to integrate liquid cooling directly into wafers, which is a significant technical signal. AI chip power density is approaching the limits of conventional thermal management.
What to watch next: Intel's external foundry revenue trajectory is the real test. Eighteen A beating production targets means nothing commercially if the customer pipeline doesn't materialise.
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