Intel

Intel cancelled its planned €30bn megafab in Magdeburg, Germany in September 2024, dealing a significant blow to European semiconductor ambitions. The company cited a sustained slump in demand and its own financial difficulties, having posted a $1.6bn loss in Q2 2024, its worst quarterly result in decades. The withdrawal triggered a public row with the German government, which had committed €10bn in state aid to attract the plant, and Left the EU Chips Act's 20% production-share target without its single largest contributor.

Founded in 1968 in Mountain View, California, Intel grew to dominate the global CPU market with its x86 architecture and remains one of the world's largest chipmakers by revenue, generating $54bn in 2023. Under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took over in 2024, the company is attempting to revive its fortunes by refocusing on manufacturing competitiveness and foundry services. Intel's products and firmware are also a persistent feature of the cyber-security landscape: vulnerabilities in Intel microcode, Management Engine, and hardware have been exploited in supply-chain and nation-state attacks, and patch cadence for Intel CPUs is a routine concern for defenders.

Intel's Magdeburg cancellation was named as a primary driver of the EU's widening chip production gap in the European Commission's 17 June 2026 Digital Decade Progress Scorecard, which placed Europe's share of global chip production at 9% against the 2030 target of 20%. The episode is now cited alongside GlobalFoundries' Crolles suspension as evidence that Europe's semiconductor strategy relied on private capital commitments that proved fragile under shareholder pressure, prompting calls for the Chips Act to be renegotiated with more binding investment obligations.