I'm surprised that Apple is not considering opening up its own fabs. Tim Cook is all about vertical-integration and they have a mountain of cash that they could use to fund the initial startup capex.
Or they could buy out Intel and sell off their cpu design division
I wonder what will happen in future when we get closer to the physical "wall". Will it allow other fabs to catch up or the opposite will happen, and even small improvements will be values by customers?
At this point it would be corporate suicide if they were not outlining a strategy to own their own fab(s).
Apple has less cash available than TSMC plans to burn this year. TSMC is not spending 50 billion dollars just because it's fun to do so. This is how much it takes just to keep the wheels on the already existing bus. Starting from zero is a non-starter. It just cannot happen anymore. So, no one in their right mind would sell Apple their leading edge foundry at a discount either.
There was a time when companies like Apple could have done this. That time was 15+ years ago. It's way too late now.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/tsmc-ends-2025-with-a-...
You're setting yourself up for making a huge part of your future revenue stream being set aside for ongoing chipfab capex and research engineering. And that's a huge gamble, since getting this all setup is not guaranteed to succeed.
As would almost innumerable others.