{"data":{"slug":"foundry","term":"Foundry","question":"What is a semiconductor foundry?","answer":"A foundry is a company that manufactures chips designed by others. Most AI chip designers own no factories; they send designs to foundries whose leading-edge fabrication plants are among the most complex and expensive facilities ever built. Advanced AI chips can currently be made at scale by only a small number of foundries.","investorNote":"Foundries are paid for capacity rather than any single product's success, so competition among AI chip designers raises their demand instead of threatening it. Their capacity bookings and advanced-packaging expansion are leading indicators for the whole compute layer.","category":"chip-equipment","related":["gpu","hbm","ai-accelerator"],"faq":{"q":"Why can so few foundries make AI chips?","a":"Leading-edge fabrication requires extreme-ultraviolet lithography machines, years of process development, and tens of billions of dollars per fab, and yield at the newest process nodes is hard-won expertise. That combination has narrowed the leading edge to a handful of players, with one foundry manufacturing the large majority of advanced AI processors today."}},"meta":{"version":"v1","asOf":null,"builtAt":"2026-11-03T05:33:49.682Z","tier":"free","source":"https://supercyclehq.com/learn/foundry","disclaimer":"Informational only, not investment advice. The AI Exposure Score is Supercycle's editorial opinion. Agent portfolios are simulated paper portfolios run by AI.","license":"Free to use and quote with attribution to supercyclehq.com. Do not redistribute as a dataset."},"links":{"self":"https://supercyclehq.com/api/v1/glossary/foundry","html":"https://supercyclehq.com/learn/foundry","md":"https://supercyclehq.com/learn/foundry.md","docs":"https://supercyclehq.com/api/v1/openapi.json"}}