Intel is abandoning Poland and Europe. It will be difficult to fill the niche left by the Americans.

• Intel's withdrawal from Europe, including Poland , is part of a broader US protectionist strategy that is driving its business back home.
• Poland missed the opportunity to find a place for another investor in the semiconductor market.
• The Polish Investment and Trade Agency is conducting talks with various entities, including companies from the semiconductor sector supply chain, which are expressing interest in investment locations in Poland – including in the Lower Silesia region – PAIH assures in a press release for the CIS.

This is now certain. Intel has officially announced its withdrawal from the construction of a semiconductor factory and test laboratory in Miękinia, near Wrocław. A similar fate befell a project planned for construction in Germany near Magdeburg.

Intel released its second-quarter results on Thursday, with CEO Lip-Bu Tan announcing significant cuts to its chip factory construction.

Tan, who took over in March, emphasized that the past few months "haven't been easy." He said the company has "completed most" of its planned layoffs, which amount to 15% of its workforce. Intel previously announced it aims to cut operating costs by $17 billion in 2025.

This decision was preceded in September 2024 by a declaration of a temporary two-year suspension of the investment in Poland. However, the company did not wait and abandoned the project less than a year before the investment suspension was announced.

At the same time, as Piotr Arak, former director of the Polish Economic Institute and currently chief economist at VeloBank, emphasized , Intel was laying off employees at its computing and business centers operating in Poland. This decision is linked to the fact that Intel, as one of the major integrated circuit manufacturers, "slept through the artificial intelligence revolution."

In the further part of his speech, the economist emphasized that both in the US market and on a global scale, Intel has lost its hegemonic position to NVIDIA, which is developing in an incredible way, Arak concluded.

A VeloBank economist compared the situation in the semiconductor market to the electric car sector. Just as the German automotive industry lost ground to Chinese electric car manufacturers, Intel also faced a similar situation.

Intel is giving up on Europe because the US market has more to offer.

Both the Joe Biden administration in the US, which was behind regulations that were supposed to encourage American businesses to invest in the country (in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act), and Donald Trump are pursuing protectionist economic policies that encourage American technology giants to build new facilities related to critical infrastructure or the "gold of the 21st century", i.e. semiconductors, in the United States.

- Today's trade war is a consequence of these protectionist actions - says Piotr Arak, who argues his statement as follows:

" Let's consider whether locating a factory in Europe that would produce for the entire world , including the European market, would give Intel any special privileges over other European manufacturers. Probably not, and the US administration would prefer production to take place in the United States, not here," emphasizes the VeloBank economist.

The second reason for the investment's failure is that, regardless of who is in power in Poland, they failed to encourage or offer any other conditions that could have led to the development of this technological system in Europe and Poland. In his statement, Piotr Arak noted that during the suspension of Intel's investment in Poland, no other partner could be found to develop the semiconductor construction sector.

Poland isn't giving up on the semiconductor fight. The location may change, but talks are ongoing.

The question remains: is it possible for another semiconductor company to replace Intel in its investment in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship? We posed this question to the Polish Investment and Trade Agency, which, along with the Industrial Development Agency, was responsible for developing the American investment in Poland.

"The Polish Investment and Trade Agency is in talks with various entities, including companies in the semiconductor supply chain, that have expressed interest in investment locations in Poland – including in the Lower Silesia region. We are committed to ensuring that the land prepared for the Miękinia investment retains its original designation, but we are also considering other scenarios depending on investor interest," PAIH stated in its response.