A type foundry is a design studio that produces and/or publishes retail typefaces, designs custom typefaces or does various activities related to type design (logotype designs, consultancy, etc.).

We inherited the term foundry from metal type printing, when typefaces (initially called fonts) were a set of types: metal pieces (one per glyph) made by melting an alloy of lead and other metals, poured into a mold to produce a series of types in batches.
“Fondre” is the French verb for “to melt.”