It seems normal and reasonable to me with their change in direction to making chips for others. Previously Intel (for the most part) needed to rapidly depreciate hardware and move to the next process node to stay competitive. Now they can continue running a process node far beyond what they would have historically to create a cheaper chip-line for third parties.
It feels like yes they want to become a external foundary, but they just havent fully committed to that task yet.
Correct, Gelsinger announced roughly a month after returning to Intel their new strategy (~2 years ago). Believe it or not, pulling apart the financials of a company the size of Intel can't be done overnight - and I would guess legally they needed some customer contracts built on the old process technology before they could depreciate assets.
>yet i have not heard of a single customer yet, just an announcement today that intel and ericsson have a partnership.
Did you spend any time looking? 30 seconds on google shows Mediatek signed up last year:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2022/08/10/inte...
Disclaimer: long Intel, recently increased my position.
A financial quarter of $250MM a couple of years after that is pretty fast.
5k wafers after ten years of foundry service is pretty abysmal.