GlobalFoundries

Full briefing

GlobalFoundries Inc. (NASDAQ: GFS) was formed in 2009 when AMD spun out its manufacturing operations, then expanded through acquisitions of Chartered Semiconductor (Singapore, 2010) and IBM Microelectronics (2015). It is owned by Mubadala Investment Company, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. Headquarters are in Malta, New York, with major fabs in Malta NY, Burlington VT (IBM legacy), Dresden Germany, and Singapore. In 2018, GlobalFoundries made the strategic decision to abandon its 7nm development program — citing the extraordinary cost and time required to compete with TSMC and Samsung at leading-edge nodes — and instead double down on differentiated specialty processes. This was a pivotal moment: it conceded the advanced-node market to TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, but freed GF to optimize for markets where customers need reliability, geopolitical diversification, and process specialization over raw transistor density. GF's key specialty processes include: (1) 22FDX (22nm FD-SOI) — a fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator process offering lower power than bulk FinFET at similar gate lengths, preferred for IoT, mobile modems, and automotive MCUs; (2) RF-SOI — the industry-standard process for WiFi 6/7 and 5G front-end RF switches used in virtually every smartphone; and (3) SiGe BiCMOS — for mmWave radar, automotive LIDAR, and high-speed optical transceivers. In the AI supply chain, GF's role is indirect but strategically important: it manufactures the RF and networking chips (for Qualcomm, Broadcom, Marvell) that form the communication fabric of AI data centers, and it provides a US-sovereign manufacturing option for defense-related AI chips that cannot be sourced from Taiwan or Korea. The US CHIPS Act has allocated GF significant funding to expand domestic capacity in Malta, NY. GF's German fab (Fab 1, Dresden) gives it a European footprint valued by automotive and industrial customers who need supply chain localization within the EU.