September 9, 2026
Bonus Content: Intel Foundry Hit 1 Million High-NA Wafers. Losses Still $2.1B.
The Defense Story Most Investors Miss
A military arsenal gets the headlines. But a supply arsenal determines whether any of it can actually be built.
Before a missile, aircraft or infrared system reaches a production line, manufacturers need the critical materials inside it. One of them is antimony, and America produces virtually none from new mines.
That is why Washington is now trying to rebuild both arsenals at once. Pouring billions into weapons production does not solve the problem if America still depends on foreign sources for the materials inside them.
One emerging company has already assembled several antimony projects on friendly ground, led by a historic district now receiving a modern second look.
The major contractors will capture the headlines. But if their products depend on a material America barely produces, the quieter opportunity may sit much closer to the beginning of the chain.
Follow the company behind the defense trade most investors overlook >
Intel Foundry Hit 1 Million High-NA Wafers. Losses Still $2.1B.
Intel’s foundry business made two kinds of news in the same week. One was technical. One was financial. Neither fully cancels the other out, and that tension is exactly where traders should focus.
At the SPIE Photomask Technology + Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography conference on September 8, 2026, Intel Foundry and ASML said more than one million wafers have been processed using High Numerical Aperture EUV lithography, spanning early tool certification through high-volume manufacturing.
Commercial production now includes selected layers on Intel’s next-generation client processor platform (including Panther Lake), and Intel said overlay, throughput, and availability are meeting Intel Foundry expectations. Intel also said products built on Intel 18A using High-NA for selected layers delivered performance that met or exceeded comparable layers patterned on ASML’s 0.33 NA NXE platform.
That is a real result. High-NA EUV is the most advanced lithography tool in the industry, and reaching meaningful manufacturing throughput ahead of most rivals is not a marketing claim.
The stock noticed. Shares rose about 9% on September 8 after Northland Securities analyst Gus Richard upgraded Intel to Outperform from Market Perform with a $120 price target. Northland tied part of the upside case to the idea that a Musk-linked “Terafab” effort could help provide scale for a loss-making foundry business, though Intel has not announced such a partnership.
The scale problem is real. Intel Foundry reported $5.8 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue alongside a $2.1 billion operating loss, and management has been clear that profitability depends on filling fabs with enough high-value volume, including external customers.
Intel CFO Dave Zinsner has said the company is targeting break-even margins for its foundry business by the end of 2027, driven by external customer engagements and new process technologies. For now, 2026 marks a shift from internal validation toward earlier-stage third-party engagement, but most customer relationships still look like they are in the courting phase rather than locked in with publicly disclosed, long-term volume commitments.
Fortinet has been the first named corporate customer announced under Tan, with Intel and Fortinet saying they will co-develop and manufacture a next-generation firewall ASIC on Intel 4. One named client is progress. It is not a pipeline. AMD has publicly described TSMC as a primary wafer supplier, which is the polite version of a door left open and a contract left unsigned.
INTC is up about 183% year-to-date through September 8, 2026. That move prices in a lot of execution that has not happened yet. The wafer milestone confirms the technology is advancing. The $2.1 billion quarterly loss confirms the cost of proving it. Watch for concrete external volume commitments and the 2027 break-even path. Those two data points will decide whether this rally extends or stalls.
