I once worked for AMD, back when they had fabs, so I can speak to that a bit. There was once a time when IBM paid for new semiconductor manufacturing technolog

I once worked for AMD, back when they had fabs, so I can speak to that a bit. There was once a time when IBM paid for new semiconductor manufacturing technology. Applied Materials and TEL and others would actually make the equipment, but IBM would pay for the development at each new node. Then, eventually, they decided they wouldn't pay, they would wait for someone else to do it, because cutting-edge semi's wasn't a core need for them any more. So, Intel became the new source of funding for research on new production nodes. There were various semi industry consortiums that coordinated all of this, but still someone had to step up with the billions that were required for each new node, and for a while it was Intel that did this. But then, eventually, the costs of R&D for each new node kept rising faster than the money you got for it, especially given that TSMC and Samsung and the rest also got to buy the new manufacturing equipment from Applied Materials and TEL and so forth, even though they hadn't sunk in the R&D cost to fund it. So, it ended up that the actual new R&D started to be done by the upstream companies that made the equipment which was bought for the fabs. This was already happening by the late 90's when I left the industry; actual semi manuf R&D was done at the equipment manufacturers, not at Intel; Intel was just the one with the financing. It worked until it didn't. TSMC execs have been quoted as saying they "outsourced their sales and marketing" to American companies.