TSMC’s CoWoS advanced packaging business is running at full tilt, and industry chatter says Intel’s Malaysia site has joined the back-end packaging work to help serve shared top-tier customers.
Report says Intel Malaysia has joined back-end CoWoS work
According to a report by Economic Daily News, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has a full pipeline of CoWoS advanced packaging orders. With back-end packaging expansion lagging the pace of front-end demand growth, the market has circulated claims that Intel’s manufacturing site in Malaysia is now assisting with back-end packaging operations.
The report says the two companies are helping serve the same major customers.
HBM shipment patterns point to a rise in Malaysia
Export data from Chipbook, under SemiAnalysis, shows that about $1.3 billion in HBM has been shipped to Malaysia. By comparison, the value of HBM shipped to Taiwan has dropped to below $3 billion, a steep decline from about $5 billion a few months ago.
Because TSMC does not have an advanced packaging plant in Malaysia, industry analysis cited in the report sees Intel as the only local packaging facility able to integrate large volumes of HBM into chip products.
Intel’s $7 billion Project Pelican was completed at the end of 2025
The report says Intel completed construction of its Project Pelican advanced packaging plant at the end of 2025, with total investment reaching $7 billion. The facility includes die sort and die prep functions and supports both EMIB and Foveros advanced packaging technologies.
With the plant now fully online, and with Intel’s earlier capacity previously limited to its site in New Mexico, the company’s total advanced packaging capacity has effectively doubled. That gives Intel more room to respond to customer demand for high-performance chip packaging.
TSMC says the back-end gap still needs more partners
The article adds that there is still no precise data on shipment volume or yield for Intel’s EMIB advanced packaging. Even so, the shift in HBM shipment flows appears to show that Intel’s packaging services have attracted some customers, creating another channel in a market that had been heavily concentrated around TSMC’s CoWoS technology.
TSMC’s C.C. Wei said the company will continue to focus on its strengths in front-end advanced packaging technology, while welcoming other manufacturers to help address the back-end capacity shortfall and strengthen overall supply-chain resilience.