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In its short 14-year history, GlobalFoundries has risen to become the world’s third-largest chip foundry. Based in upstate New York, GlobalFoundries isn’t a household name because it’s manufacturing semiconductors that are designed and sold by other companies.

But it’s quietly helping power nearly every connected device. 

“Look at every electronic device in your house, and I would bet you money that every one of those devices has at least one GlobalFoundries chip in it,” Thomas Caulfield, GlobalFoundries CEO, told CNBC.

GlobalFoundries chips are inside everything from smartphones and cars to smart speakers and Bluetooth-enabled dishwashers. They’re also in the servers running generative artificial intelligence models, a market that’s booming so quickly that chipmaker Nvidia has surpassed a $1 trillion market cap and is forecasting 170% sales growth this quarter.

Within generative AI, GlobalFoundries isn’t focused on making the powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train large language models like ChatGPT. Instead, the company is manufacturing chips that perform functions like power management, connecting to displays, or enabling wireless connections.

Caulfield says AI is “the catalyst for our industry to double in the next eight years and GF will have its fair share, if not more, of that opportunity.”

Five years ago, GlobalFoundries made a bold move away from leading-edge chips, exiting a race that was won by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

Now, as tensions with China raise concerns over the world’s reliance on TSMC, and the U.S. and China play technological tug-of-war with export controls, GlobalFoundries finds itself positioned well outside the geopolitical crosshairs. The company has spent about $7 billion to expand production in Singapore, Germany, France and upstate New York.

CNBC went to Malta, New York, for a firsthand look at the fabrication plant where GlobalFoundries is adding 800 acres, to ask how the company plans to stay ahead while developing the older chips still essential for everyday devices.

‘It worked out for everybody’

The story began in 2009, when Advanced Micro Devices decided to break off its manufacturing operations into a separate company and focus entirely on designing chips. The newly formed GlobalFoundries took over AMD’s chip fabrication plant, or fab, in Dresden, Germany. At the time, it was a joint venture between AMD and the government of Abu Dhabi’s tech investment arm. Moorhead was working at AMD.

“Our founder, Jerry Sanders, at AMD said, ‘real men have fabs.’ So the thought of spinning out the fab from AMD into its own company was a really big deal,” Moorhead said. AMD “had to do it,” he added, because “the expenses for a leading edge fab were doubling every two or three years. And right now we’re looking at investments of campuses upwards of $100 billion.”

For the first few years, AMD was GlobalFoundries’ only major customer. AMD has since grown to become Nvidia’s main rival for designing GPUs.

“I think it worked out for everybody,” Moorhead said.

GlobalFoundries started building its new fab, and future headquarters, in Malta in 2009. The next year, it expanded into Singapore with the purchase of Chartered Semiconductor. By 2015, it had acquired IBM‘s in-house semiconductor division, taking over production sites in Vermont and New York. By 2018, GlobalFoundries was a $6 billion business.

“Unfortunately, it had a strategy that was not able to produce profitability or free cash flow,” said Caulfield. “So in 2018, when I became the CEO of GlobalFoundries, we decided to make a strategic pivot to focus all our energy, all our R&D, all of our capital deployment to go be the very best at these essential chips. And that began a journey to turning our company around to profitability.”

To this day, GlobalFoundries only makes 12-nanometer chips and above, or what it calls “essential” chips. 

GlobalFoundries CEO Thomas Caulfield shows a 300mm wafer to CNBC’s Katie Tarasov at Fab 8 in Malta, New York, on September 5, 2023.

Carlos Waters

“If you do secure pay transactions, whether it’s on your credit card or on your smart mobile device, we make the chip that does that,” Caulfield said. “Do you like the photographs your camera takes? Well, we make image sensor processors that drive that camera. Do you like the battery life on your phone? We make the PMICs, the power management ICs that make sure that power is managed on these devices.”

During the 2021 chip shortage, GlobalFoundries told CNBC it sold out entirely. That same year, the company went public on the Nasdaq.

“Ultimately, we really need these chips,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of research firm Futurum Group. “We found that out because we had parking lots full of pickup trucks that couldn’t be shipped because they couldn’t put the ECU in or they couldn’t install power seats. So GlobalFoundries had a really strong market requirement.”

Global growth

GlobalFoundries is the only one of the world’s top five chip foundries based in the U.S. The other four are Semiconductor Manufacturing International in China, Samsung with fabs in South Korea and the U.S., and United Microelectronics and TSMC, which are both in Taiwan.

“Not only do we have a high concentration of semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan between TSMC and UMC, but TSMC is twice the size of the other four companies combined,” Caulfield said.

TSMC makes more than 90% of the world’s most-advanced microchips, creating vulnerability during supply chain backlogs as well as risks tied to China’s continued threats to invade Taiwan. Like GlobalFoundries, TSMC also makes older nodes. Caulfield said GlobalFoundries is absolutely going after TSMC.

“Not only do we have aspirations, we think in certain areas we’ve won,” Caulfield said. He pointed to his company’s radio frequency chips and silicon on insulator technology.

“Silicon on insulator is a huge differentiator when it comes to power, and TSMC doesn’t use that,” Moorhead said.

At a time of geopolitical turmoil, GlobalFoundries is investing about $7 billion to add capacity in parts of the world with lower risk.

In Singapore, the company just completed a $4 billion expansion that it says makes it the country’s most-advanced fab. In June, it finalized a deal with STMicroelectronics to build a jointly owned fab in Crolles, France. 

Not all global expansion endeavors have gone smoothly, however. In 2017, GlobalFoundries made big plans for a fab in Chengdu, China. In 2020, it backed out.

“It turned out we had three relatively large facilities around the world already that were severely underloaded,” Caulfield said. “Adding more capacity at a time when we couldn’t fill our existing capacity was just going to create a bigger economic hole for us.”

The U.S. has recently enacted a series of export bans on chip companies sending advanced tech to China. By only producing older nodes, GlobalFoundries says it’s been “very minimally” impacted.

Making chips in the U.S.

Although GlobalFoundries’ chips are considered legacy nodes, the process and resources needed are still incredibly complex. Caulfield said each silicon wafer goes through at least 1,000 steps over 90 days in the Malta fab. The process requires extensive cleaning, cooling and chemical treatment, which uses a lot of water. GlobalFoundries says Fab 8 uses about 4 million gallons of water a day, reclaiming 65% of that.

“Upstate New York is a very good place for access to high-quality and abundant water,” Caulfield said.

All the heavy machinery also requires about 2 gigawatts of power per day, according to Hui Peng Koh, who heads up the Malta fab. She said it’s enough power to “run a small city.”

“I would say our lowest-cost power is in the U.S.,” Caulfield said. “A lot of our power in upstate New York, where this facility is at, comes from hydroelectric, so it’s a greener power. In both Europe and Singapore, much of that power comes off of natural gas.”

Then there’s the manpower. GlobalFoundries has 13,000 employees worldwide. About 1,500 people report to Koh in Malta. She told CNBC it’s “challenging to attract talent to this part of the world.”

GlobalFoundries recently established the first apprenticeship program that’s registered in the U.S. to help develop a semiconductor workforce in Vermont and New York. In July, TSMC blamed a shortage of skilled labor for delays to its fab being built in Arizona.

The high cost of materials and construction work also make building a fab in the U.S. more expensive than in much of Asia, so public subsidies have been key for reshoring production. GlobalFoundries said New York pitched in more than $2 billion for the Malta fab. The company also applied for funds from the $52 billion national CHIPS and Science Act. Focusing on 12-nanometer and above also helps the company keep costs down.

GlobalFoundries’ Fab 8 in Malta, New York, where Equipment Engineering Manager Chris Belfi led CNBC’s Katie Tarasov on a tour on September 5, 2023.

GlobalFoundries said it’s putting out 400,000 wafers per year from its Malta fab. While Caulfield wouldn’t put a dollar figure on the wafers, he said at any given time, there’s “about a half-billion dollars worth of inventory that’s running over those 90 days to create product.”

GlobalFoundries’ main customers for this massive output of essential chips are the world’s largest fabless chip companies, including Qualcomm, AMD, NXP and Infineon

Eventually, many of its chips end up in the auto, aerospace, and U.S. defense industries.

GlobalFoundries is known for making “specialty chips” in big, exclusive deals, like one with Lockheed Martin in June for onshoring production of certain chips, and a recent $3 billion agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Newman said GlobalFoundries has around 50 such long-term agreements.

“Effectively they’re saying, ‘We will create a stable margin commitment capacity and if the market shifts, we’re going to stand by the letter of our agreement,'” he said.

For companies hit hardest by the chip shortage, a deal with GlobalFoundries is a hedge against it happening again. In February, General Motors set aside exclusive production capacity at the Malta fab.

“GM, their lines got held up for very low-cost components because they couldn’t get enough,” Moorhead said. “What GM decided is that this is too much supply chain risk. We’re going to go directly to GF.”

GlobalFoundries says automotive is one of its fastest-growing segments. It makes many different kinds of chips for cars: the microcontrollers for power seats, airbags and braking; the sensing chips for cameras and Lidar; and battery management chips for electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, the growth of GlobalFoundries’ smartphone business is decelerating, alongside an industrywide slowdown. GlobalFoundries laid off 800 employees in December and January, and issued weaker-than-expected revenue guidance for the third quarter.

“Smart mobile devices last year represented 46% of our revenue,” Caulfield said. “While it grew last year, it was 50% the year before. So we’ve been trying to build our other business and to get more balanced, rather than having such a high exposure to smart mobile devices.”

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Apple raises trade-in prices for iPhones in China to spur demand in key market

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Apple raises trade-in prices for iPhones in China to spur demand in key market

People stand in front of an Apple store in Beijing, China, on April 9, 2025.

Tingshu Wang | Reuters

Apple on Friday raised the amount of money people can get off their next iPhone in China by trading in their old device, rolling out further incentives to spur demand in a crucial market.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max now has a trade-in value of up to 5,700 Chinese yuan ($791), an increase from 5,625 yuan previously. For reference, a brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at 7,999 yuan in China. The iPhone 15 Pro model can now be traded in for up to 4,750 yuan, up from 4,725 prior.

There are also trade-in value increases across other models too.

Apple has looked to offer discounts over the last year, especially around holiday periods in China. While the latest hikes are not huge, they signal Apple’s ongoing desire to galvanize sales in the world’s second largest economy, where it has faced falling market share and declining sales amid tougher competition from local rivals.

In the first quarter of the year, Apple’s China shipments fell 8% year-on-year, while the company’s share of the smartphone market in the country declined from 15% to 13%, according to data from Canalys. Apple also reported this month that sales in its Greater China region, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, fell slightly on an annual basis.

But Apple’s China headache goes beyond sales to questions over its supply chain and products. While U.S. President Donald Trump has paused most tariffs on China for now, there is still an ongoing discussion about whether chips and other electronics may receive a special duty.

Apple, which makes around 90% of its iPhones in China via its manufacturing partner Foxconn, has been looking to move more production to India — though Trump has also voiced displeasure with that. The White House leader said this month that he told Apple CEO Tim Cook he doesn’t want the company building products in India and would rather them make devices in the U.S.

Apple’s biggest challengers number Xiaomi and Huawei, with the latter seeing a stunning revival in its home market over the last 17 months thanks to breakthroughs in chips and aggressive launches of new devices.

Xiaomi, which was the biggest player by market share in China in the first quarter, has meanwhile been ramping up its presence in the high-end device space to directly compete with Apple. On Thursday, the company launched the Xiaomi 15S Pro smartphone that contains an in-house developed chip — something very few companies in the world have managed to do successfully.

Xiaomi has also committed nearly $7 billion to develop more chips over the next 10 years, signaling its ambition to compete with Apple and Huawei.

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BYD beats Tesla in European EV sales despite EU tariffs in ‘watershed moment,’ report says

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BYD beats Tesla in European EV sales despite EU tariffs in 'watershed moment,' report says

Though the difference between the two brands’ monthly sales totals is relatively small, the implications of BYD beating out Tesla “are enormous,” says Felipe Munoz, global automotive analyst at JATO Dynamics.

Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Despite incurring a higher tariff rate than Tesla, Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD sold more pure battery electric vehicles in Europe for the first time ever last month — a “watershed moment” for the region’s car market, according to a report from JATO Dynamics.

New car registrations data from the automotive intelligence firm shows that BYD’s Europe volumes rose 359% in April from last year as the company continues its global expansion efforts.

Over the same period, Tesla reported yet another monthly drop, with total volumes down 49%, JATO said. That follows protests against CEO Elon Musk and the company in the region. JATO’s data comes from 28 European nations.

BYD’s success in the EU comes despite the economic bloc’s imposition of punitive tariffs on battery EVs made in China last October. The EU attributed the move to unfair trade practices.

The punitive tariffs appeared to be favorable to Tesla, assigning its made-in-China vehicles a 7.8% duty compared with BYD’s 17%. Other Chinese EV makers were given tariffs as high as about 35%. The EU also has a standard 10% car import duty.

Emerging battleground

Felipe Munoz, global automotive analyst at JATO, said the difference between the two EV makers’ April sales was relatively small, but that the implications of BYD beating out Tesla “are enormous.”

JATO added that BYD is also beating well-established European car brands across the region, outselling Fiat and Seat in France, for example.

“This is a watershed moment for Europe’s car market, particularly when you consider that Tesla has led the European BEV market for years, while BYD only officially began operations beyond Norway and the Netherlands in late 2022,” Munoz said.

BYD’s growth comes even before production begins at its new plant in Hungary, which is expected to become the center of European production operations.

“Europe is emerging as a central battleground between BYD and Tesla,” Liz Lee, associate director at technology market research firm Counterpoint Research, told CNBC. She added that the region is expected to experience higher electric vehicle market growth this year than China, which already has high EV penetration.

The tariffs have provided more impetus for Chinese EV makers like BYD to localize manufacturing in the region, according to Lee. Tesla is also reportedly working on plans to expand its manufacturing base in Germany.

JATO’s report said that while tariffs had an initial impact on the sales of Chinese automakers, the companies have mitigated it by expanding and diversifying their European line-ups with the introduction of plug-in hybrids.

“China is not only the world leader in BEVs; its automakers are global leaders in plug-in hybrid vehicles too,” Munoz said. 

Battery EVs run entirely on electricity, while hybrid vehicles combine an electric battery with an internal combustion engine. Hybrid vehicles have not yet been targeted by EU tariffs.

Meanwhile, there has been growing demand in the region’s EV segment, with JATO data showing that registrations of battery EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are up by 28% and 31%, respectively, despite declines among internal combustion engine vehicles. 

Registrations of all electric vehicles made by Chinese automakers in April rose by 59% year on year, reaching almost 15,300 units in April, the report added.

Ahead of the EU’s tariff decision last year, Rhodium had predicted that tariffs would need to be as high as 55% for the European market to be unattractive for Chinese EV exporters.

In March, it was revealed that Tesla, which only sells pure battery vehicles, fell behind BYD in total annual sales. 

Tesla’s shares have fallen over 10% over the same period amid blowback from Musk’s involvement with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. The CEO recently committed to leading Tesla for the next five years. 

BYD shares were up 3.9% in Hong Kong trading on Friday and have surged about 78% year to date.

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Amazon shareholders reject proposal to split CEO and chair roles

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Amazon shareholders reject proposal to split CEO and chair roles

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon shareholders rejected a proposal to adopt a policy that would require the company’s CEO and board chair roles to remain separate.

Vote totals disclosed in a filing Thursday show about 82% of shareholders rejected the proposal. The independent proposal was submitted alongside seven others at Amazon’s annual meeting on Wednesday. Each of the independent proposals were rejected.

Amazon split the roles of CEO and board chair when founder Jeff Bezos turned the helm over to Andy Jassy in 2021. As part of the transition, Bezos retained the title of executive chairman.

The proposal sought to codify that structure within Amazon “like the majority of S&P 500 companies,” advocacy group the Accountability Board wrote in its submission. The group argued that the split structure allows the board to focus on corporate governance and oversight, while the CEO focuses on the company’s business.

“With the positions currently separated, now would be an opportune time to do so,” the proxy states.

Shareholder proposals seeking the separation of board chair and CEO roles have been on the rise in recent years. The number of such proposals increased 113% among Russell 3000 companies in the first half of 2023, the highest level in the past decade, according to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.

Amazon urged shareholders to vote against the proposal, saying the current policy enables the board to determine the right leadership for the company “in light of our specific circumstances at any given time.”

The separation in 2021 came “after careful consideration” of Amazon’s leadership structure and functions, the company wrote in its recommendation.

“In light of our success through these various leadership structures, the board believes that shareholders are better served by the board retaining the ability to adapt to our evolving needs and implement the optimal leadership structure at any given time,” Amazon wrote in the filing.

WATCH: Amazon has ‘levers’ to pull in tariff war, says strategist

Amazon has 'levers' to pull in tariff war, says strategist

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