The possible partnership sits within a broader turnaround plan. Tan said Intel must "reclaim the leadership in CPU" and become more willing to modify chips for customer needs, pointing to customised Xeon processors alongside GPUs and accelerators. He identified ASICs, co-packaged optics, physical AI and advanced packaging as growth areas, and wants two or three of them to eventually contribute around 10% of Intel's revenue each.

The foundry business is another pillar. Tan said the 18A manufacturing process has reached volume production, while the next-generation 14A process is progressing: version 0.5 of its design kit is out, version 0.9 is next, and version 1.0 for volume production is expected in early 2027. He said multiple customers want Intel to scale their business, but did not identify them or disclose potential order sizes. In January, two prospective customers were evaluating 14A test chips, with firm supplier decisions expected in the second half of 2026 and the first half of 2027.

Cooperation between the two rivals would not be new. In October 2024 they established the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group with other companies to coordinate improvements to the x86 instruction set, and that work has since extended into AI software: last week AMD was reported to be integrating its ZenDNN optimisations into Intel's open-source oneDNN library, putting CPU optimisation for PyTorch AI inference on a common software path. The companies cooperate on shared technologies while still competing for customers.