On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported Intel had been approached by fellow chip giant Qualcomm about a possible takeover. While any dea

Qualcomm wants to buy Intel

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2024-09-20 20:30:02

On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported Intel had been approached by fellow chip giant Qualcomm about a possible takeover. While any deal is described as “far from certain,” according to the paper’s unnamed sources, it would represent a tremendous fall for a company that had been the most valuable chip company in the world, based largely on its x86 processor technology that for years had triumphed over Qualcomm’s Arm chips outside of the phone space.

It would also be a massive coup for Qualcomm, which re-entered the desktop processor market this year as a part of Microsoft’s AI PC strategy after years of dominance in mobile processors.

Intel, meanwhile, is arguably in its weakest position in years — while many of its businesses are still profitable, the company announced substantial cuts, shifts in strategy, and a 15-plus percent downsizing of its workforce this August after reporting a $1.6 billion loss.

At the time, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said the company would stop all non-essential work and has since announced it will spin off its chipmaking business, a part of the company that it had long touted as a strength over rival AMD and the many fabless chipmakers that rely on entities like Taiwan’s TSMC to produce all of their actual silicon.