First four paragraphs (cause paywall won’t let most people see this).
Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years.
A deal for Intel, which has a market value of roughly $90 billion, would come as the chip maker has been suffering through one of the most significant crises in its five-decade history.
A deal is far from certain, the people cautioned. Even if Intel is receptive, a deal of that size is all but certain to attract antitrust scrutiny, though it is also possible it could be seen as an opportunity to strengthen the U.S.’s competitive edge in chips. To get the deal done, Qualcomm could intend to sell assets or parts of Intel to other buyers.
Intel—once the world’s most valuable chip company—had seen its shares drop roughly 60% so far this year before The Wall Street Journal reported on the approach. As recently as 2020, the company had a market value above $290 billion. The stock closed up over 3% Friday after the Journal’s report.
Hello.
As someone who’s in the space and has been around Qcomm and their deals before.
It won’t happen.
They will flirt like you can’t imagine, they will propose, make offers, etc.
But closing the deal? No.
They are very smart, and Intel is too big for them to dismantle and exploit with value.
Their interest is not in Intel belonging to them, but in a large, Intel shaped hole in the market that they can attack, and their discussions are more likely about Intel’s roadmaps so they can understand how they could best exploit Intel’s fall.
They are unlikely to even hire some of Intel’s spoils, maybe a few strategic VPs, but… they’re just smart and ruthless and Intel is the dregs and bloated nowl.
The only way they’d do it is if the government sweetened it such that Intel was basically free, and they could fire as many as they want in a reasonable period, basically letting them own Intel without any cost at all. That is possible depending on how desperate the government is to prevent their fall, but I don’t think anyone can make the right promises in time.
I am really not sure how I feel about this. It feels like when Cisco Systems bought Kalpana back in '94 and brought us the Catalyst 3000. So sexy, much disaster. Very bugs.
I really wanted to like that switch. It got better, but so did I.
Where was I?
Oh right: Qualcomm buying Intel. That’s not gonna help anything or anyone. Bad idea.
Absofuckinglutely not
Can we stop with the megamergers and buyouts please?
There can only be one true corporation and you will pay infinite money for every one of its products.
Sorry, there’s no way Qualcomm is buying Intel as is
At the end of its third quarter of its fiscal 2024, […] Qualcomm had $7.8 billion in cash and […] just over $23 billion in total assets. That means Qualcomm, […] is almost certainly looking at a stock-for-stock transaction. As of writing, Qualcomm’s market cap is $188 billion, just more than double that of Intel’s at $93 billion.
In fact, Chipzilla may not be worth much to Qualcomm unless it can renegotiate the x86/x86-64 cross-licensing patent agreement between Intel and AMD, which dates back to 2009. That agreement is terminated if a change in control happens at either Intel or AMD.
While a number of the patents expired in 2021, it’s our understanding that agreement is still in force and Qualcomm would be subject to change of control rules. In other words, Qualcomm wouldn’t be able to produce Intel-designed x86-64 chips unless AMD gave the green light.
