Global Foundries

In August 2018, Global Foundries announced an indefinite halt to 7nm logic process development, redirecting R&D toward specialty technologies like FD-SOI. The decision reflected the prohibitive cost of competing with TSMC and Samsung at the leading edge, where each new node required over $10 billion in development spend. The firm judged that serving RF, automotive, IoT, and defense markets with mature and derivative nodes offered better risk-adjusted returns.

AMD spun out its manufacturing division in 2009 to create Global Foundries, retaining a minority stake that it fully divested by 2012. The two firms maintain a long-term wafer supply agreement that was last amended in 2021, securing capacity for AMD's non-leading-edge products through 2025. AMD is no longer a controlling shareholder.

The US Department of Defense sources secure chips from the Burlington, Vermont Trusted Foundry facility, which is ITAR-accredited and one of the few US-owned fabs capable of producing classified microelectronics. European defense contractors access capacity through the Dresden fabs, and the 2022 Crolles partnership with STMicroelectronics explicitly targets the European automotive supply chain with French government backing.

The company trades on Nasdaq under the ticker GFS, having completed a $26 billion IPO in October 2021. Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, remains the controlling shareholder, holding over 85% of outstanding shares as of the 2024 proxy filing. Mubadala had acquired full ownership through a series of transactions starting in 2009.

Global Foundries operates solely as a pure-play semiconductor foundry — it manufactures integrated circuits to customer specifications and does not design or sell its own branded chips. Its value-add lies in process development, design enablement via PDK and IP libraries, and packaging services. The firm competes directly with TSMC, Samsung Foundry, and UMC for fabless semiconductor company orders.