Analyst(s): Brendan Burke, Fernando Montenegro
Publication Date: July 22, 2026
Intel and Fortinet announced a strategic collaboration to develop the Fortinet Security Processor 6 (SP6), combining Fortinet’s purpose-built ASIC expertise with Intel’s design, packaging, and manufacturing capabilities. The deal validates Intel Foundry’s differentiated offering for purpose-built silicon and strengthens the resilience and geographic diversity of Fortinet’s global supply chain.
What Is Covered in This Article:
- Intel and Fortinet announced a strategic collaboration to develop the Fortinet Security Processor 6 (SP6), expanding a long-standing relationship between the two companies.
- The collaboration pairs Fortinet’s proprietary security-processor design with Intel’s disaggregated design, ecosystem IP, and advanced packaging for AI-enabled and cost-sensitive applications.
- The companies frame the work as accelerating Fortinet’s ASIC roadmap while improving the resilience and diversity of Fortinet’s global supply chain.
The News: Intel Corporation and Fortinet announced a strategic collaboration to develop the Fortinet Security Processor 6 (SP6), combining Fortinet’s proprietary, purpose-built security processor expertise with Intel’s advanced design, packaging, and manufacturing capabilities to accelerate and strengthen SP6 development. The companies describe the agreement as an expansion of a long-standing relationship, and say the work will also help improve the resilience and diversity of Fortinet’s global supply chain.
Beyond Fortinet’s leadership in purpose-built security processors, the collaboration brings in Intel’s portfolio of ecosystem IP, its expertise in disaggregated semiconductor design, and advanced packaging solutions tailored for both AI-enabled and cost-sensitive applications. The stated aim is a highly integrated security processor capable of supporting increasingly sophisticated security services and the performance requirements of today’s organizations.
“This collaboration demonstrates how Intel’s semiconductor leadership and advanced design, packaging, and manufacturing capabilities can help cybersecurity leaders like Fortinet accelerate the development of critical security technologies while building a more resilient and diversified global supply chain,” said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel.
Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Fortinet, said the expanded relationship “will leverage its unique combination of advanced semiconductor technology, manufacturing expertise, and global supply chain capabilities, helping Fortinet accelerate and strengthen our ASIC strategy.” The companies said they will explore additional opportunities across semiconductor technology, manufacturing, and cybersecurity infrastructure.
Intel Foundry Lands Fortinet SP6 as Custom Silicon Validation
Analyst Take: The SP6 collaboration proves that custom silicon customers have a legitimate route to market via Intel Foundry. Fortinet’s FortiASIC family has been an architectural differentiator for more than two decades, offloading security functions from general-purpose CPUs to deliver the throughput and power efficiency that appliance-based network security demands. That Fortinet is willing to route its next-generation security processor through Intel’s design, packaging, and manufacturing stack is a proof point for Intel Foundry’s core thesis that disaggregated design plus advanced packaging can accelerate a demanding customer’s custom silicon roadmap rather than merely fabricate someone else’s finished design. Intel is positioning itself not as a commodity wafer supplier but as a co-development partner for purpose-built ASICs, the segment where switching costs are highest, and relationships are stickiest.
For Intel, a marquee cybersecurity design win is a credibility signal to the broader foundry pipeline, where the company still trails TSMC on demonstrated external customer volume and process maturity. For Fortinet, the value is a faster path to a more integrated SP6 and access to packaging techniques, chiplet integration, and heterogeneous assembly, among them, that are difficult to source at scale elsewhere. The disaggregated approach lets Fortinet mix silicon strengths: security-specific logic where it owns the IP, Intel ecosystem IP and packaging where for scale and process access.
The Supply Chain Story Will Resonate with Enterprises and Governments
Both companies emphasize supply chain resilience and geographic diversity, and that language is deliberate. Security appliances sit at the trust boundary of enterprise and government networks, and the provenance of the silicon inside them has moved from a procurement footnote to a board-level and regulatory concern. Sourcing a security processor through a manufacturer with a U.S.-anchored, geographically diversified footprint addresses a demand that regulated customers have made increasingly explicit. “Where the chip was made” is becoming a feature Fortinet can sell.
On a cautionary note, Intel Foundry announced design partnerships have outpaced disclosed high-volume external production, and execution on advanced nodes and packaging has been the company’s persistent vulnerability, not its ambition. The performance and integration benefits described here are, for now, a roadmap rather than a benchmark. Fortinet retains its own fabrication relationships, and nothing in the announcement suggests exclusivity or that Intel becomes Fortinet’s sole ASIC path.
For Security Buyers, the Silicon Is Becoming Part of the Trust Chain
There is a cybersecurity reading of this deal that sits underneath the supply chain framing. Purpose-built security processors do not just move packets faster; they increasingly anchor functions the rest of the stack has to trust, from cryptographic operations to the integrity of the appliance itself. As more of that trust is pushed down into silicon, the provenance of the silicon stops being a logistics question and becomes a root-of-trust question: who designed it, who fabricated it, and whether the buyer can actually reason about that chain. The geopolitical implications are increasingly visible.
Read that way, routing SP6 through a U.S.-anchored manufacturer is not only about resilience against disruption; rather, it is about giving regulated buyers a hardware trust story they can better defend to their own auditors and regulators when the time comes. It is the same instinct behind pairings such as GlobalFoundries and Lockheed Martin, and we expect it to spread across the security appliance market rather than stay unique to Fortinet. This can lead to increased interest in sovereignty-aligned vendor options and raise the strategic importance of cybersecurity purchases even further.
The Real Test Is Whether Intel Converts Design Wins Into Yielded Volume
Fortinet competes on the security effectiveness and price-performance that its custom silicon enables, against Palo Alto Networks and others that lean more heavily on merchant silicon and software-defined architectures. If Intel delivers SP6 on schedule with the packaging integration promised, the collaboration reinforces the ASIC advantage that underpins Fortinet’s margin structure. If Intel’s execution slips, Fortinet absorbs the roadmap risk it would not carry with a more proven foundry. That asymmetry, upside validation for Intel against execution risk it has repeatedly struggled to retire, is the honest characterization of what was announced: a strategically sound partnership whose value is contingent on manufacturing performance that remains unproven.
What to Watch:
- Whether Intel and Fortinet disclose an SP6 tape-out, process node, or first-silicon milestone, the signal that the collaboration has moved from intent to execution.
- Whether the “additional opportunities” the companies flagged materialize into a broader, multi-generation ASIC commitment or remain limited to SP6, which would indicate how deep Intel’s design-win pipeline in security silicon actually runs.
- Whether competitors respond by emphasizing their own supply-chain provenance or merchant-silicon flexibility, and whether enterprise and government buyers begin writing silicon origin into security-appliance procurement criteria.
See the complete press release on the SP6 collaboration between Fortinet and Intel in Intel’s Newsroom.
Disclosure: Futurum is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum as a whole.
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Author Information
Brendan is Research Director, Semiconductors, Supply Chain, and Emerging Tech. He advises clients on strategic initiatives and leads the Futurum Semiconductors Practice. He is an experienced tech industry analyst who has guided tech leaders in identifying market opportunities spanning edge processors, generative AI applications, and hyperscale data centers.
Before joining Futurum, Brendan consulted with global AI leaders and served as a Senior Analyst in Emerging Technology Research at PitchBook. At PitchBook, he developed market intelligence tools for AI, highlighted by one of the industry’s most comprehensive AI semiconductor market landscapes encompassing both public and private companies. He has advised Fortune 100 tech giants, growth-stage innovators, global investors, and leading market research firms. Before PitchBook, he led research teams in tech investment banking and market research.
Brendan is based in Seattle, Washington. He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Amherst College.
Fernando Montenegro serves as the Vice President & Practice Lead for Cybersecurity & Resilience at The Futurum Group. In this role, he leads the development and execution of the Cybersecurity research agenda, working closely with the team to drive the practice's growth. His research focuses on addressing critical topics in modern cybersecurity. These include the multifaceted role of AI in cybersecurity, strategies for managing an ever-expanding attack surface, and the evolution of cybersecurity architectures toward more platform-oriented solutions.
Before joining The Futurum Group, Fernando held senior industry analyst roles at Omdia, S&P Global, and 451 Research. His career also includes diverse roles in customer support, security, IT operations, professional services, and sales engineering. He has worked with pioneering Internet Service Providers, established security vendors, and startups across North and South America.
Fernando holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and various industry certifications. Although he is originally from Brazil, he has been based in Toronto, Canada, for many years.
