Following more than a year of “deep talks,” The Wall Street Journal reports Apple has reached a preliminary agreement with Intel for the former titan to produce some of the chips that power its devices. The size of the deal is not yet known. Since i Journal Remember, Apple recently shipped more than 200 million iPhones a year, and it needs a steady supply of silicon for millions of other devices, including iPads and Mac computers.
Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. Intel, meanwhile, declined to comment.
According to the JournalIn the past 12 months, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has met several times with Apple’s leadership, including outgoing CEO Tim Cook, to convince the company to return to business with Intel. Before 2020 and the arrival of the first Apple Silicon chipset for the Mac, Intel was, without a doubt, one of the most important partners of Apple. Beginning in 2006, the company’s iconic MacBook line received its first revival after former Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the company’s first wave of Intel-powered laptops. In a roundabout way, the Apple C1 modem also wouldn’t exist without Intel; Apple bought most of the modem company in 2019 for $1 billion. That deal saw about 2,200 Intel employees, as well as IP and equipment, transferred to Apple.
But like many of Apple’s supply chain relationships, the honeymoon with Intel was not to last. In 2010, the company had started designing its chips, starting with the Apple A4, which eventually reached the first iPad and the iPhone 4. In 2015, Apple also released the 12-inch MacBook, its first laptop without a fan. The 2015 MacBook was a device ahead of its time, but it was also the beginning of the widely reviled “butterfly” keyboard design. I suspect the performance of Intel’s ultraportable processors in that computer played a role in Apple’s decision to go with its own chips. Speaking from experience, the 2015 MacBook and its updates never felt very fast due to their x86 architecture.
In 2020, Intel was a shell of its former, once-dominant self. The company, for many years, failed to compete with Qualcomm – and by extension ARM – in the mobile space. Recently, the unthinkable began to happen when AMD began to take PC CPU market share away from Intel behind its flagship Ryzen processors.
However, recent geopolitical changes seem to have worked in the company’s favor. After Intel appointed Lip-Bu Tan in 2025 to succeed former CEO Pat Gelsinger, President Trump was quick to criticize the executive and call for his resignation due to past ties to China. But Tan seems to have won the president’s ear not long after that, because later that year the White House announced it would take a 10% stake in Intel. In September, Intel then signed a $5 billion deal with NVIDIA to build PC and data center CPUs for the AI giant. In April, it followed that up with a deal to support Elon Musk’s Terafab project, which will see Intel produce chips for Tesla, SpaceX and xAI.
Now the company appears to have at least a preliminary agreement with Apple. I Journal reports President Trump himself represented Intel to Tim Cook during a meeting at the White House.
