Intel is Getting a $2 Billion Investment From SoftBank

Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment the embattled chipmaker. SoftBank will pay $23 per share for Intel's common stock. The investment is a vote of confidence in Intel, which has not been able to take advantage of the AI boom in advanced semiconductors and has spent heavily to stand up a manufacturing business that has yet to secure a significant customer.

"Masa and I have worked closely together for decades, and I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment," Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement. Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, their worst performance in the company's more than half-century on the public market.

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Re:headline

[chrisvdb]

Agreed on the sentiment, but calling SoftBank a bank gives them too much credit.

Same reason AMD got bailed out

[rsilvergun]

Nobody wants a single x86 CPU vendor. For all the Doom and gloom Intel is still out selling AMD two to one but that's mostly due to OEM contracts.

And as always if your sale start to drop off there's a real chance Wall Street will just eat you alive.

That was just a story about Kodak talking about going under even though they're profitable. And I remember back in the day when 3dfx went tits up while their cards were flying off the shelves.

If Wall Street smells the slightest bit of weakness like a pack of jackals they'll tear you apart.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

If x86 ceased being manufactured 10-15 years from now, would very many people even care?

AMD how shown a willingness to try out ARM in the past, and I suspect they'd throw their weight behind ARM or RISC-V if that is what the data center industry wanted to pay for.

As much as I enjoyed my last 40+ years as an x86 user, I don't think I need one to do my job or play the games I like to play.

Re:

[x_t0ken_407]

As much as I enjoyed my last 40+ years as an x86 user, I don't think I need one to do my job or play the games I like to play.

I tend to agree (s/40+/30+), especially given my new company-purchased workstation is a Macbook Air M3 and I'm LOVING the performance, along with filling my need for gaming through Steam and playstation remote (of course requires a PS5 in my case, but still, doesn't matter that my workstation is on an ARM chip).

Stupid decisions

[DrYak]

And I remember back in the day when 3dfx went tits up while their cards were flying off the shelves.

3dfx also did a couple of pretty stupid things: at a time when most 3d companies were just making chips and collaborating with 3rd party graphic cards manufacturer, 3dfx decided to "cut the middle man out" and produce their own first-party cards instead. Cue in all 3rd party graphic cards manufacturers switching to use Nvidia's chips instead (and also some trying this new ATI that was starting to enter the 3d chips market).

Re:

[MBGMorden]

Which is incredibly ironic because Nvidia started out making their own cards, and then transitioned to selling chips to partners. The two reversed.

3dfx literally was already the more successful of the two initially, and then swapped to the less successful business model.

Granted 3dfx had other problems (their initial architecture was great but they had trouble iterating on it and making good new ones).

Agreed

[rsilvergun]

It's the kind of thing Microsoft never would have done because they would have recognized that it let a competitor get a foot in the door.

I do think that wasn't going to do much more than buy them some time though. Programmers were moving to DirectX and off of 3D effects glide API. So they were going to face competition.

If they were a lot more cutthroat though they could have done various antitrust violations to prevent that competition from getting anywhere. Although Nvidia was pretty cutthroat so

API

[DrYak]

Programmers were moving to DirectX and off of 3D effects glide API.

By that time point (2000s), Glide itself wasn't that much relevant: most game engine relied on high level API (DirectX 3D as you mention, and also OpenGL: Quake3 had already been out for 1 year, and "mini GL drivers" that serve as an adaptation between high level OpenGL and low level such as Glide were all the rage).

Very few engines had Glide-specific optimizations.

API exclusivity wasn't playing a role anymore.

But failing to have distinguishing features that attract users did play a role.

VSA-100 in Voodoo

Kiss of Death

[JoeyRox]

When SoftBank invests in your company you might as well shut it down the next day.

Re:

[RitchCraft]

Yep, they're going to suck that company dry.

Re:

[ahoffer0]

I was just thinking the same thing. No one knows how to bet on a loser like SoftBank does.

Penny change level of investment

[blahbooboo]

SoftBank, the company that invested $16 billion in we work alone. Intels Intel's revenue for 2024 was approximately $53.1 billion and its market cap is over $107 billion. This is a press release for attention, not a significant investment for either company

Re:

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

"This is a press release for attention, not a significant investment for either company"f

Came here to say that. Less than 1/10 of what you need to build a state-of-the-art fab.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of "investment" is often critical to get the company over a financial slump---e.g. Intel's revenue is large, but their profits, and therefore free cash flow is non-existent... getting an infusion of $2b of "free" cash can literally save a company from going belly up.

Re:

[zlives]

stock is up so yeah

Split them up already

[Gavino]

I really think intel needs to be taken to with a big meat cleaver, and chopped into two distinct parts - one for chip design, and one for fabs. The poor sod chip designers were held back for years, being tied to intel's inferior process nodes (when compared to the likes of TSMC), whereas AMD were free to get on the cutting edge. Also, if I was Lisa Su from AMD, would I take my advanced CPU designs to TSMC for production, or to a direct competitor like Intel - even if both TSMC and Intel could offer the exact same thing for the same price? I'd go with TSMC, and not give away IP and profit to a direct competitor. Even if I wasn't in direct competition with Intel, you still wouldn't want to use Intel fabs as you'd imagine that Intel would give top billing tog Intel's own chips, and any fab customer would play second-fiddle. If there were fab delays, then they are more likely to prioritise their own chips and bump others, to keep their retail arm happy.

So both sides of the business hold each other back. It's a terrible model. The so-called "synergies" don't outweigh the costs. The rest of the industry has basically proven that.

This is a bad move by Softbank. They are just delaying the inevitable. What needs to happen is for intel to fully crash and burn into the ground like a Boeing jumbo jet. Then from the ashes, after liquidation they can split into a dedicated small and nimble design team, where real innovation is rewarded, and also a separate fab team, who are outwardly focussed on winning contracts across the whole Industry. The design team wouldn't be tied to x86 either - they can also embrace Arm and RISC-V.

Re: Split them up already

[higfchjgddljr5778]

I donâ(TM)t think all the blame for intel is on the fabs. They had stuff made by TSMC and it really was not better. Errors is they their firmware files led to issues in their 13 and 14 gen. That is really what made those stop selling. Intel failed to keep their Engineers where they needed them and did not pursue the right goals. I think their turn around is very possible. I would have said guaranteed, but then they hired Tan.

I hope they added conditions

[CEC-P]

If it was me, they're not getting money unless they stop making rusty, defective garbage, stop naming their products such stupid things, stop under-shipping to overprice their chips, and stop stopping development of new technology just because their competition stopped making chips for a while.