At Citibank's Global 2025 TMT conference, Intel CFO David Zinsner made an appearance and talked about the economics of Intel's next-generation 14A node. According to Zinsner, the "14A [node] is more expensive than 18A. It is not significantly [more expensive] in terms of investment. [But] it is a higher wafer cost, for sure and partly that is because we, we are expecting to use High-NA EUV tools in 14A, which was not the case in 18A." The use of High-NA EUV tools suggests that Intel will install the Twinscan EXE:5200B machine, which costs $380 million . Given the high cost of these tools, Intel will need to raise its wafer prices to break even, assuming the 14A node attracts external customers.

Intel claims its upcoming 14A node will deliver significant efficiency gains, achieving roughly 15-20% better performance per watt, or a 25-35% reduction in power consumption compared to the 18A node. Under the hood, 14A combines several process advances. RibbonFET 2 updates Intel's gate-all-around transistor architecture, while PowerDirect moves the power delivery network to the chip's backside so supply rails can feed transistor sources and drains more directly. The node also introduces Turbo Cells , taller high-drive cells placed within compact standard-cell libraries to shave critical timing paths and lift CPU and GPU frequencies without large area or power penalties. By contrast, scaling 18A will depend on more capable lithography tools with higher resolution, so the node can avoid relying on multi-patterning.