Intel has reportedly sought an investment from rival chipmaker TSMC.

The conversation, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was no doubt an awkward one considering Intel's relationship with the Taiwanese foundry giant.

Intel's claim to fame is that, unlike most of its competition, it designs and manufactures chips. Or at least it used to be that way. Over the past few years Intel has outsourced production of some CPUs, GPUs, and networking kit to TSMC. Chipzilla continues to make its own Xeon family of datacenter processors.

As it sent more work to TSMC, Intel also tried to create a foundry biz to compete with the Taiwanese company. That costly endeavor is yet to land a major customer, and is therefore thought to have contributed to former CEO Pat Gelsinger's abrupt " retirement "

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