Oh of course there needs to be fabs, but plenty of them exist. All I was saying is that if you want to make a chip, you don't need to take on Intel's capex.
There's something to be said for tight integration between fab and design when you're trying to go in to uncharted territory.
If you don't need to be at the edge of process technology, you're completely right of course.
Regarding the edge of technology - Intel doesn't beat others to a new node by making both chips and fabs, it would beat others even if it was only building fabs. And it's not like TSMC is that much behind Intel. Grandparent who mentioned 28nm could mention 16nm except that there the masks will costs much more but it's still millions, not billions.