Recently, it was reported that SoftBank has stopped cooperating with Intel on the development of artificial intelligence chips. According to the Financial Times, the collaboration was terminated due to Intel's failure to meet SoftBank's stringent requirements for production scale and speed. The setback has raised questions about what Intel has to overcome in its own financial woes.
The end of the partnership, which follows Intel's announcement in early August that it would lay off thousands of employees, reflects the financial difficulties the company may be facing, which has affected its ability to meet SoftBank's expectations.
SoftBank did not stop there, and instead launched a new cooperation with Taiwan's Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), the world's largest semiconductor foundry. By joining forces with TSMC, SoftBank expects to strengthen its competitiveness in the AI chip market, which is currently dominated by NVIDIA.
Originally, SoftBank's Izanagi project planned to develop an AI processor with performance comparable to Nvidia GPUs, and expected to leverage Intel's production technology. However, as Intel failed to meet the project's needs in terms of scale and speed, SoftBank began looking for other partners.
Figure: SoftBank terminated its AI chip cooperation with Intel
TSMC is still in talks with SoftBank and has not finalized any agreement. At the same time, TSMC is also struggling to balance its needs with existing customers, including large companies such as AMD and Nvidia.
SoftBank's Izanagi project is part of Son's larger AI strategy, which aims to create a complete AI solution that spans hardware components, applications, and data centers. SoftBank plans not only to develop AI processors, but also to create its own software ecosystem.
The company's vision is to build AI data centers using its own chips, and it plans to build multiple data centers in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East by 2026. In addition, SoftBank's Arm recently announced that it will launch its own AI chip next year, and plans to set up a dedicated AI chip division and develop a prototype by the spring of 2025.
Arm serves as the basis for numerous chip designs, and its designs are adopted by top companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia. Arm is reportedly in advanced talks with contract manufacturers, including TSMC, with the goal of starting production of these AI chips in the fall of 2025.
