Apple Flirts With Adding Intel, Samsung into Main Chip Supply Chain

Two chipmakers are the new apples of Apple’s eye.

The $4.1 trillion tech giant has had early-stage discussions about using Intel and Samsung as suppliers for the main processors in its devices, sources told Bloomberg News on Tuesday, in what would be a geopolitical and supply-chain hedge against its lead supplier in Taiwan.

The Intel Inside Track

Apple’s supply chain dependencies have turned problematic in the age of tariffs and friend-shoring. In 2025, the company ramped up iPhone manufacturing in India by more than 50% to 55 million units, or 25% of total output, as it reduced risk from trade fisticuffs between the US and China.

Securing chips in the US from Santa Clara, California-based Intel and South Korea’s Samsung, which is building an advanced chip plant in Texas,would diversify another part of Apple’s supply chain away from geopolitical risk. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Apple’s longtime chip supplier and partner, is exposed to Beijing’s “one-China principle.” Apple would also have a hedge against production bottlenecks at TSMC, which have been especially onerous amid massive AI demand and highlighted the need for more suppliers. If Samsung and Intel were to become those suppliers, each would score a massive customer, adding to a hot run of deals for Intel:

• Intel, which previously provided chips to Apple for 15 years leading up to 2020, has been mired in manufacturing delays and struggled to grow revenue in recent years as it lost market share to AMD in CPUs and Nvidia in GPUs. But the AI boom has created a wellspring of demand for its CPUs; its 7.2% revenue growth to $13.6 billion in the first quarter blew past Wall Street expectations.
• Intel’s run of success can also be attributed to a little help from friends: The US government took a 10% stake, valued at $8.9 billion, last August, and President Trump recently said he’s “very proud” of the company. Nvidia also made a $5 billion investment in September, and last month, Intel said it was expanding its partnership with Google and joining Elon Musk’s $25 billion AI chip project, Terafab.

Don’t Hold Your Breath: The talks, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg, are just that. No orders have been placed, considerations are preliminary, and Apple could well call the whole thing off. But, even with Intel’s more than 100% jump last month, the mere news that it was being scouted by Apple drove its shares up 13% to a new record on Tuesday (Samsung also rose 6%).