Intel names Fortinet as first outside foundry customer

Intel has named Fortinet as the first external customer for its foundry business on Intel 4, a notable step as the chipmaker tries to prove it can compete with TSMC.

The companies said they are working together on the Fortinet Security Processor 6 (SP6), the custom silicon used in FortiGate firewalls. Intel will handle the chip’s design, advanced packaging, and manufacturing. Intel told Tom’s Hardware that the SP6 will be built on Intel 4, a process node the company had previously kept for its own products.

That makes Fortinet the first outside customer publicly tied to the node, and the first corporate foundry customer Intel has been willing to name since Lip-Bu Tan took over in March 2025, as CNBC reported. Tan told investors in May that “multiple customers” were already working with Intel Foundry, but said he would not identify them.

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Intel’s push comes as it looks for validation for its contract manufacturing business. In an April filing, the company said it was still pursuing a “significant” customer for its more advanced 18A and 14A processes — the technologies central to justifying the cost of its new fabs. So far, the foundry’s biggest confirmed customers remain Intel itself and the US government.

“accelerate and strengthen our ASIC strategy”

Fortinet has been designing its own chips for two decades, an uncommon move in a market where many vendors rely on off-the-shelf processors.

For Fortinet, the pitch is partly about supply-chain security: an American-designed chip made in an American fab, as The Register noted. The company ranked first in firewall appliances shipped in early 2023, with a 48% unit share.

There is also a competitive angle. TSMC manufactured the previous SP5, so Intel is taking over work from a rival foundry, as ServeTheHome noted. The SP6 is expected to use a chiplet design rather than the monolithic approach used for the SP5 in 2023.

What the deal does and does not mean

The announcement is still limited in scope. Intel 4 is not the leading-edge process Intel most urgently needs to sell, and neither company disclosed specs or a production timeline. Intel said only that more details will come later.

The financial impact also appears modest. ServeTheHome estimated the contract represents part of a roughly $2 billion hardware business, far short of the $10-billion-a-year customer Intel is seeking. Fortinet also previously sat within Intel’s Xeon supply chain, so this is not an entirely new relationship.

Even so, the timing matters. Intel revealed the customer name two days before quarterly earnings, with the stock already up sharply this year — but the bigger test remains unchanged: landing a major buyer for 18A or 14A.