In a historic deal, India’s IT services firm, Wipro has been outsourced to design and manufacture Intel chips. In this deal, Wipro engineers will work on the latest offering by Intel, the 18A chip node, which will then be used in bleeding-edge consumer electronic devices from next year.
Although the size of the deal is still unknown and Wipro hasn’t shared any details with the news, sources claim that the deal is Wipro’s biggest deal in the last three years. In an exchange filing, Wipro said that the chip they will design and manufacture for Intel will be used across multiple sectors like automotive, industrial and communication verticals and will also be used for generative AI-driven designs. This deal will be a part of Wipro’s ‘AI360’ ecosystem under which the company plans to target new clients for AI services. Recently many other companies like Tower and Foxconn have shown interest in setting up a chip manufacturing plant in India in conjunction with local tech companies.
The vice president of Wipro, Atul Kapur, said in a statement, “The partnership with Intel Foundry marks a significant step towards becoming a part of the semiconductor industry for the company. This deal supports chip supply and chip manufacturing. We will deliver silicon devices to our clients with proven industry-standard flows and process technologies from Intel Foundry. We will be targeting new startup markets, especially in the generative AI space.”
Wipro has been seeing a small decline of around 4.1% in its operating revenue this year, and this deal can make a significant impact on the performance of the company. Moreover, analysts expect the chip industry to grow to a massive $250 billion this year.