From leading technology company to talk of it being sold off to the highest bidder, Intel has had a bumpy ride as of late. The company just reported its Q2 2026 earnings, however, and they’re surprisingly upbeat. Revenue, margins, and earnings per share are all above expectations, and even the Foundry business doesn’t appear to be floundering quite so badly as it was once made out to be.
Let’s start with Foundry, Intel’s manufacturing arm. When Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan joined the company a year ago, he threatened to halt development of cutting-edge process nodes (if not a death sentence, pretty close to one) if a big customer wasn’t found or goals left unmet for the 14A process.
“There are no more blank checks,” Tan said at the time. Yet he couldn’t sound much more positive about the Foundry business today.
“My confidence in our foundry process roadmap has grown significantly since joining over a year ago. I am more confident than ever of the strategic in significant and unique value proposition of Intel Foundry,” Tan says in the earnings call (via Seeking Alpha). “During Q2, our factories across Intel 7, Intel 3 and Intel 18A exceeded internal volume targets, driven by improving yields, better cycle times and increasing wafer starts.”