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Intel

Intel Acquisition Target of Mystery Suitor, SemiAccurate Reports 93

Posted by msmash from the breaking-news dept.
Tech news and research site SemiAccurate is reporting that an unidentified company is seeking to acquire Intel in its entirety. The publication -- citing a confidential email that it reviewed and a subsequent confirmation from a second source -- said the prospective buyer has not publicly disclosed its interest but has sufficient resources to purchase Intel at current valuations (about $85 billion).

Intel Acquisition Target of Mystery Suitor, SemiAccurate Reports More | Reply

Intel Acquisition Target of Mystery Suitor, SemiAccurate Reports

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  • Ooh a buyout (Score:3)

    by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @09:16AM (#65096061) Homepage Journal

    I was wondering after intel's miserable failing chips of the last few years if they could find a way to lower quality even more, and wall street delivers.

    • Gosh I predicted this.

      There were rumors about this being Qualcomm in September. I wonder if it's them.

      • Well it has to be a US company, basically because some of the state support they are getting is dependent on that.

      • Qualcomm is a possibility.

        But I'd bet on private equity or a sovereign wealth fund.

        Intel should be split in two, separating design from fabrication, but that will take time. Qualcomm is a public company and shareholders might not tolerate a long lag to profitability. Private equity has more patience.

        • Re:Ooh a buyout (Score:4, Insightful)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @09:58AM (#65096211) Journal

          I am not convinced that splitting the design and fab part of the house is really the right move for all. Run the clock back about 15 years and everyone was talking about how Intel's vertical integration was a strength.

          AMD did what they did because it was a solution to financial problem, I am not sure they really had any other choice that did not end in a bankruptcy court room.

          Intel's problems don't seem to be that they are undercapitalized at the moment. If they sold off their fabrication operation, what would invest the cash in? Why would being at the mercy of bidding wars for fab time and someone other entities production schedule be a good thing?

          • 15 years ago plenty of posters HERE were telling you that their vertical integration was a weakness

            They knew. You STILL dont.

            • Only a few weeks ago the Arm CEO was quoted as saying Intel's vertical integration was a strength. :)

              https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]

              • He did say that but with a caveat, "But the cost associated with it is so high that it may be too big of a hill to climb." And, "You ought to license Arm because if you've got your own fabs, fabs are all about volume and we can provide volume." I wasn't successful in convincing him to do that..."

                It was always economics that dictated what AMD did and what intel did back then. Back in the desktop and laptop days, intel had the volume advantage over AMD and vertical integration made sense. Now that desktop/lap

              • Arm CEO was quoted as saying Intel's vertical integration was a strength. :)

                The CEO of ARM has a vested interest in seeing Intel fail.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Kisai ( 213879 )

              Vertical integration is a strength until one of the support pillars gets knocked out. So one failed chip launch can crush every subsequent launch for years. We haven't seen these level of failures since the Pentium 90 FDIV bug and the Pentium 4 i820MTH flaw.

              Horizontal integration is a strength until one of the businesses starts bleeding money, in which case you just sell it or shut it down. This is why your snack foods degrade in quality, shrink and then finally disappear. You don't buy enough, so the busin

          • Vertical integration is a strength only when the fabrication process is top notch. Otherwise, it saddles the company with poor fabs. Back in the day, Intel was almost one full node ahead of everyone else in the industry, and spent money to stay that way. Now they are behind, and still spending money at the same rate.

            My first instinct would be to figure out why Intel can't stay ahead. It is quite possible that the current Wall Street economic climate won't let Intel invest sufficiently in fabrication.

          • > If they sold off their fabrication operation, what would invest the cash in?

            Was it 25 years ago they stopped paying for R&D in favor of executive bonuses leading directly to AMD eating their lunch? Whenever it was, this could be a way out of that quagmire. They could heavily invest in designing new chips that actually compete. Yes they would lose even more money in the mean time for the loss of low-cost fabs, but they're not so far behind that if they really do put the money into new R&D they

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Kobun ( 668169 )
              It wasn’t just executive bonuses. Look up how much they spent on stock buybacks, and then imagine if they spent the same amount on getting their fabs back up to speed.

          • It was a strength back when they had superior process technology, which was also back when that was cheaper to accomplish.

            The world has changed.

        • CIFUS will not allow a strategic company like Intel with military importance to be bought by a sovereign wealth fund, especially the American first Trump administration.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mysidia ( 191772 )

            Intel's military importance may be gone now that ARM has largely obsoleted the ancient x86 CPU architecture, and their GPUs are second rate; developments in AI put them way behind. Probably their lack of relevant products would be why their valuation has sunk..

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by klashn ( 1323433 )

              There's still plenty of government organizations that follow the mantra usually uttered for IBM, "no one ever got fired for buying X."
              Where X = IBM, or Intel in this case.

        • But I'd bet on private equity or a sovereign wealth fund.

          Because we need is private equity getting their hands on a chip company and running it the same way they run hospitals [cbsnews.com].

          Prospect Medical's bankruptcy comes less than a year after the bankruptcy of Steward Health Care, another major hospital system once-backed by private equity. CBS News documented how Steward, along with private equity investors, extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from that company, potentially leading to shortages of life-saving medical equipment.

      • It's Motorola. ;-)

      • I doubt it is qualcomm because they were kind of vocal last year about this and charlie wrote that "When a company wants to use the press, public opinion, or investors as a denial of service weapon, they go public and go public loudly. When a company wants to actually buy something, they do whatever they can to avoid leaks to keep the price down." which to me would be his way of saying "it is not qualcomm, try again".
        Lots of comments about apple, nvidia, musk, but I don't think any of them would have intere

      • It's got to be a US company, so it's got to be one of:
        NVidia
        Qualcomm
        Broadcom

        I don't think it's Texas Instruments, since that company has taken a different path in recent years (since buying National Semiconductor).

        Micron? Outside chance.

        AMD can't because of anti-trust legislation.

    • Intel chips aren't bad by any measure, except power efficiency. They fixed that with the Lunar lake. But.. Lunar lake isn't as profitable was the other chips it made... so its not moving forward with them.

      They still make competitive chips, but their business was shielded from any competition for so long, the grew on the assumptions of margins that were not sustainable when competition like AMD and ARM showed up.

      So I'm tempted to say a cost cutting plan could be successful to reduce the overhead. But we all

      • "Intel chips aren't bad by any measure, except power efficiency."

        That matters because it has cost implications. But that's also false. For example mitigations for speculative execution security issues are more expensive on Intel.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
      They may not be able to make them worse physically but they can sure downgrade the product perception by naming their next chips even more cryptical, illogical strings of contradictory numbers and letters that mean nothing. That would at least get them halfway there.

    • Maybe it can be Bain Capital and they can gut the corpse like they've done with so many other companies.

  • SemiAccurate is not working right now
  • It would shake things up a bit if Apple bought them. They are on a big push to bring chip fabs in-house. But my money is on Dell or Oracle. HP and IBM have the ability, but I don't see them being agile enough to pull it off. Bezos could too, if he wanted to get into tech manufacturing; it just doesn't seem his style.

    • It would shake things up a bit if Apple bought them. They are on a big push to bring chip fabs in-house. But my money is on Dell or Oracle. HP and IBM have the ability, but I don't see them being agile enough to pull it off. Bezos could too, if he wanted to get into tech manufacturing; it just doesn't seem his style.

      Apple has done well with its own chips, running as far away from Intel as possible, and they've achieved impressive results. What does Intel have to offer Apple, besides fabrication facilities?

      My gut, not my brain says Samsung, and I'm too lazy to research further. Samsung would do very well with Intel. But with Trump coming into office, I'll discount this theory right now.

      • apple bought PASemi just to have its own CPUs and with the whole intel modem debacle I don't think they would touch intel with a 1000 ft pole.
        Samsung is foreign, it would probably never be authorized by the government.

      • It would shake things up a bit if Apple bought them. They are on a big push to bring chip fabs in-house. But my money is on Dell or Oracle. HP and IBM have the ability, but I don't see them being agile enough to pull it off. Bezos could too, if he wanted to get into tech manufacturing; it just doesn't seem his style.

        Apple has done well with its own chips, running as far away from Intel as possible, and they've achieved impressive results. What does Intel have to offer Apple, besides fabrication facilities?

        My gut, not my brain says Samsung, and I'm too lazy to research further. Samsung would do very well with Intel. But with Trump coming into office, I'll discount this theory right now.

        Not to mention Intel's fabs are years behind TSMC, so making the next A- and M-series SOCs at Intel fabs is a non-starter, unless Apple wants its iPhones and Macs to be fatter, slower, and with worse battery life.

        • Apple might have gained some knowledge about what gives TSMC its advantage (I suspect it's mainly their pellicle technology).

          Intel has a lot of EUV steppers on order, if TSMC's moat is a couple essential trade secrets and they were foolish enough to expose them to Apple they could be in trouble.

    • It would shake things up a bit if Apple bought them. They are on a big push to bring chip fabs in-house. But my money is on Dell or Oracle. HP and IBM have the ability, but I don't see them being agile enough to pull it off. Bezos could too, if he wanted to get into tech manufacturing; it just doesn't seem his style.

      I would have guessed Apple when they were still using Intel chips, but as you point out they have significant investments in Apple Silicon and buying Intel would make much less sense. My guess it's more likely a chip manufacturer who wants to expand into an all in one integrated solution, rather than a PC manufacturer; I'm guess ing a PC manufacturer would not want to go all in on specific architecture and be stuck with it if ARM or another architecture becomes prevalent.

      • I don't think anyone is interested in buying Intel is going to be doing it for Intel's AMD64 clones. Having to support all Intel's current AMD64 CPU deals is probably a negative. A buyer is going to do it to get their hands on Intel's IP, employees, and fabs. Apple already did this once when they bought out Intel's modem division.

        • I don't think anyone is interested in buying Intel is going to be doing it for Intel's AMD64 clones. Having to support all Intel's current AMD64 CPU deals is probably a negative. A buyer is going to do it to get their hands on Intel's IP, employees, and fabs. Apple already did this once when they bought out Intel's modem division.

          Yea, the IP would be valuable. I wonder how modern their fabs are vs building new ones; so unless you need capacity now, how valuable are the fabs?

          Employees? If you really want someone you can hire them away for a lot less.

          • The fabs and expertise are quite valuable. The equipment in them running obsolete process nodes less so, but still incredibly valuable because every chip doesn't need to be made on the absolute smallest process node - there's plenty of microcontrollers and flash memory chips fabbed at cheaper and more refined processes that make quite a bit of money, and are in big demand for embedded systems, auto manufacturing, etc.

            A potential purchaser might be looking to bank on that while they retool to the latest pro

    • Oracle had their own fabless supplier (Oracle Microelectronics aka Sun Microelectronics) which they gave up on in 2017.

  • Broadcom (Score:3)

    by pipatron ( 966506 ) <pipatron@gmail.com> on Friday January 17, 2025 @10:14AM (#65096291) Homepage

    Broadcom is tagged in the fine article but not mentioned in the actual text.

    That's a pretty good hint.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by klashn ( 1323433 )

      The other tag is 'acquired' as if this has already happened...

    • Broadcom is tagged in the fine article but not mentioned in the actual text.

      That's a pretty good hint.

      I think your suggestion raises anti-trust issues to overcome. But what am I thinking? I've been appreciating Lina Kahn's FTC recently and that's coming to an abrupt end. In the impending administration I can't see antitrust enforcement an issue, so long as Corporation X donates a few million to the inauguration 'costs' [politico.com].

      That said, I just searched and Broadcom isn't one of the companies donating millions.

    • Re:Broadcom (Score:4, Insightful)

      by esperto ( 3521901 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @11:09AM (#65096567)

      oh $diety, the horror!
      really hope not them after all the vmware stuff, can only imagine they would probably completely get rid of costumer SKUs, only leave the xeon line with 3 models of CPUs, change the sell model for subscription and charge USD1k a month for each core and completely get rid of support for old products.

    • That was my first guess as well.

      The argument for Qualcomm is that Intel almost has a working cell modem that would crush Qualcomm's royalty scheme which is scummy.

      And to think I almost registered Eudora!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kobun ( 668169 )
      This would be a horrible acquisition for Broadcom. Their whole strategy is to extract blood from a stone via vendor lock in. They have no such barrier to competition with Intel, all this would do would be to accelerate AMD‘s ascendancy

      • What would Broadcom do with a fab? It takes a completely different way of thinking to run a fab as opposed to software company.

        Fabs have to be invested into 5-10 years. This isn't just for next quarter that most of the stock market demands. Broadcom, IMHO, likely wouldn't understand to be always working on new sub-nanometer fab technology, and if this isn't done, Intel will be effectively worthless as SMIC and TSMC put them in the ashbin of history.

        It takes some old school, shareholder thinking to do a f

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          What would Broadcom do with a fab? It takes a completely different way of thinking to run a fab as opposed to software company.

          I think Broadcom got really burned by not having fabs during the pandemic, because a lot of their chips were build on old processes, where demand for the processes had dropped off, and a lot of the manufacturing had shut down to maintenance levels, and suddenly there was demand for those old processes again.

          So buying at least Intel's older fabs might not be a terrible investment for them.

  • Other options (Score:3)

    by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @10:17AM (#65096309) Journal

    People keep talking about a competitor like Qualcomm or Nvidia, or a private equity outfit, but there are some other major players who might be looking for vertical synergies like... Microsoft?

    If I were Microsoft and the producers of the platform my entire product line relies upon was, rightly or wrongly, considered floundering right now and undervalued, I'd be very interested in buying them.

    The thing about Qualcomm and Nvidia is that neither really needs Intel or anything Intel has. For Qualcomm it'd be mostly redundant. For Nvidia, they're doing very well just selling proprietary processing units that can be slapped onto anything, be it Intel architecture or something more exotic. The only reason I can think of is if they are interested, it gives them access to a large body of patent rights and other technology sharing agreements - but it's awfully expensive even for that.

    But Microsoft? No overlaps, an opportunity to steer ix86-64 development in the direction they want it to go... it's almost a no-brainer.

    • Microsoft made Intel.

      • Nah, "Intergalactic" Digital Research made Intel. Possibly IBM too, who settled on the 8088 long before they thought they'd have to turn to Gates for an OS (they were expecting it to ship with CP/M 86.)

        Yet again Microsoft gets credit for something someone else did first and earlier!

    • People keep talking about a competitor like Qualcomm or Nvidia, or a private equity outfit, but there are some other major players who might be looking for vertical synergies like... Microsoft?

      If I were Microsoft and the producers of the platform my entire product line relies upon was, rightly or wrongly, considered floundering right now and undervalued, I'd be very interested in buying them.

      The thing about Qualcomm and Nvidia is that neither really needs Intel or anything Intel has. For Qualcomm it'd be mostly redundant. For Nvidia, they're doing very well just selling proprietary processing units that can be slapped onto anything, be it Intel architecture or something more exotic. The only reason I can think of is if they are interested, it gives them access to a large body of patent rights and other technology sharing agreements - but it's awfully expensive even for that.

      But Microsoft? No overlaps, an opportunity to steer ix86-64 development in the direction they want it to go... it's almost a no-brainer.

      And if there's one thing Microsoft needs, it's more of a complete stranglehold on the PC market. Jesus wept. How long would it take them to lock Intel CPUs out of running anything but Microsoft approved OSes?

      • Funny thing is I don't think they care about non-Microsoft OSes any more. But if they can ship Office and Edge making use of unofficial op codes to make them 10x as fast as the competition, I'm sure they will...

    • People keep talking about a competitor like Qualcomm or Nvidia, or a private equity outfit, but there are some other major players who might be looking for vertical synergies like... Microsoft?

      If I were Microsoft and the producers of the platform my entire product line relies upon was, rightly or wrongly, considered floundering right now and undervalued, I'd be very interested in buying them.

      But Microsoft? No overlaps, an opportunity to steer ix86-64 development in the direction they want it to go... it's almost a no-brainer.

      I'm not so sure about the value Intel would bring to MS. PC hardware is a commodity business, and something MS generally has avoided; even with their new ARM devices I suspect that is more of an attempt to kick start demand and will stop if ARM machines take off since they would now be commoditized as well.

      Add in their cloud push and owning a chip maker whose long term viability is questionable makes even less sense to me.

      The whole deal makes me wonder what the breakup value of Intel is? It may be worth mor

      • The value is complete control over the direction of ix86-64 and its successors in future. The "Intel" division continues to sell Intel chips to Dell et al, and they continue to sell Windows to Dell et al.

        What's interesting is that if there is a risk of Intel being taken over by some other company, Microsoft is probably interested in being that other company even if it wasn't before as virtually every other possible owner is a risk to them:

        - PE may break Intel long term and do to it what they did to Toys R U

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Microsoft is the only clear bid here - who has 85 million liquidity sitting around in this market?

      Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft - not many others. Of those, only Microsoft would significantly benefit from x86/64 and the fabs. Everyone else is heavily invested in ARM and would gain nothing strategic from the move. For Amazon, they're also invested in AMD, ARM and a couple other CPUs - it'd be a cost-only benefit to them.

      For Microsoft, it would allow for vertical integration comparable to App

    • Microsoft is planning to continue to spend a lot on AI ... spending a large chunk of their cash on Intel would impact their AI plans.

  • SoftBank? (Score:3)

    by klashn ( 1323433 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @10:26AM (#65096353) Journal

    SoftBank loves to lose money, so it is very likely them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Arm is losing SoftBank money? If so, there's no hope at all for Intel.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by klashn ( 1323433 )

        I said that in jest... there's plenty of bad investments that SoftBank made over the last few years.
        ARM made them money, but also, Intel is a completely different beast with it's fabs, and I doubt we'd see them go due to national security concerns.

  • Too bad there's not an easy way to spin up a Public Benefit Corporation or co-op to step in and take over Intel with opposite effect of a VC buyout. It's just very difficult to pull off. Honestly, I would suspect Elon to bid on it. He has the money and he loves the power and influence, even if it's not a directly profitable endeavor. Imagine him owning all the biggest american industries - space, cars, chips, social media. That is a little disturbing, but honestly, what alternatives for a buyout are there t
  • With Khan headed out the door the timing of this offer tells me it's someone the FTC under Khan wouldn't allow.

  • I’m skeptical of the SemiAccurate article—unnamed sources and paywalls make it hard to take these claims at face value. Still, it’s an interesting idea, and speculation about who could buy Intel is always fun. Assuming for a moment that the mystery company does have the resources and serious intent, who could it be, and why or why not?

    Apple: They’ve got the cash reserves and love vertical integration, but they’ve moved on from x86 with their ARM-based silicon. Intel’s fab

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by higuita ( 129722 )

      SemiAccurate is that, SemiAccurate !! :D

      He always report that he is not 100% sure of all the info, he have many contacts in the industry and have rumors ... but some business/deals end failing, others are just quick queries, others are totally wrong interpretations (say 2 CEO from different companies having a dinner may be just a simply friendly meet up, not a acquisition query). He listen to many stories and do his own analysis, some come true, other fail

    • Intel seems like a somewhat tricky one for acquisition given how the people most interested in owning them(either for architecture and product portfolios or for manufacturing capabilities and R&D) are outfits who any vaguely sensible antitrust regulator would run screaming from(Nvidia, as you noted, got slapped away from ARM; them eating Intel would be the bad outcomes expected for mobile and embedded visited upon client and datacenter, possibly even worse given Nvidia's GPU edge; and Samsung or TSMC ar

  • I'm betting it's Elon Musk (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @01:24PM (#65097051)

    ... and that the offer is contingent on Intel listing him as a founder of the company.

  • What companies, investment group, or who 1. has that money and 2. thinks they can turn Intel around?

  • Buy Intel. Then Fire the management. Keep the engineers and patents.

    But, I predict a future buyer will instead fire the engineers, sell the fabs, and keep the patents.

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