[HN Gopher] Intel sells 51% stake in Altera to private equity fi...
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Intel sells 51% stake in Altera to private equity firm on a $8.75B
valuation
Author : voxadam
Score : 66 points
Date : 2025-04-14 21:59 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.intel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.intel.com)
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| It was a silly acquisition in the first place, and their
| justification clearly came from a coke-addled fever dream.
|
| Intel soon discovered the obvious, which is that customers with
| applications well-suited to FPGAs already use FPGAs.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Intel soon discovered the obvious, which is that customers
| with applications well-suited to FPGAs already use FPGAs.
|
| Yes, but pairing an FPGA somewhat tightly integrated with an
| actually powerful x86 CPU would have made an interesting
| alternative to the usual FPGA+some low end ARM combo that's
| common these days.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Applications that benefit from the Zynq-style combination
| (e.g. radio systems) generally take that approach because
| they have SWaP concerns that preclude the use of big x86 CPUs
| in the first place.
| snihalani wrote:
| What's a SWaP concern?
| superkuh wrote:
| Size Weight and Power.
| 201984 wrote:
| Size, Weight, and Power. It would be very nice if people
| would take the two seconds to type those words out
| instead of using ungoogleable acronyms on a public forum
| unfamilar with the terms.
| michaelt wrote:
| Sure, if they wanted to intel _could_ have done what nvidia
| did with CUDA: Put the tech into everything, even their
| lowest end consumer devices, and sink hundreds of millions
| into tooling and developer education given away free of
| charge.
|
| And _maybe_ it would have lead somewhere. Perhaps. But they
| didn 't.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It was the thought at the time that they'd do this. It's
| amazing that they don't seem to have _actually tried_ ? Any
| sense as to why or what went wrong?
| georgeburdell wrote:
| If AMD did the same thing years later, was it really that
| foolish?
| komadori wrote:
| Do you think AMD's decision to buy Xilinx was any better or
| not?
| Alupis wrote:
| Perhaps we can say it was less of a distraction for AMD,
| given AMD is not having the basic execution issue that Intel
| is currently suffering.
| rcxdude wrote:
| And less disastrous for Xilinx, given they could basically
| just keep going as they were before, instead of being
| significantly diverted onto a sinking ship of a process.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| There was some hope at the time that FPGAs could be used in a
| lot more applications in the data center. It is likely still
| feasible. Remember Hennessy published:
|
| https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~wl/teachlocal/arch/papers/cacm19go...
|
| And maybe this is/was a pipe dream - maybe there aren't enough
| people with the skills to have a "golden age of architecture".
| But MSFT was deploying FPGAs in the data center and there were
| certainly hopes and dreams this would become a big thing.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| That was certainly the dream, but unfortunately for them it
| didn't turn out to be a new market.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| I don't know enough about hardware to know why - why didn't
| this story play out as hoped?
| matt3210 wrote:
| It made their stock pop for a while which was all that mattered
| to Brian Krzanich who took the bonus and left the mess in the
| hands of Bob Swan who did the same things and left the mess ...
| (recursion her).
| nativeit wrote:
| > Intel soon discovered the obvious, which is that customers
| with applications well-suited to FPGAs already use FPGAs.
|
| So selling FPGA's was a bad move? Or was the purchase price
| just wildly out-of-line with the--checking...$9.8B annual
| market that's expected to rise to $23.3B by 2030?
| Alupis wrote:
| I wonder if we'll see more Intel sell-offs, as Tan et al try to
| get things under control.
|
| Will we see an AMD-esque fab spin-off?
| nxobject wrote:
| Would market regulators allow a single buyer to acquire all of
| Intel's fabs in one go?
| Alupis wrote:
| My guess would be no, but I could be wrong. The current
| administration clearly wants more domestic capability, so
| even if someone like TSMC/Samsung/etc wanted to acquire as
| part of their US operations, my gut says it would be
| challenged.
|
| When AMD spun off their fabs into what became Global
| Foundries, it was difficult for many to see the upside.
| However, today, it seems not being tied to any particular
| fab/tech is one of AMD's biggest advantages.
| jsight wrote:
| I'd guess that they'll continue to sell off mobileye over time.
| rsp1984 wrote:
| Should change title. They sold 51% at a valuation of $8.75B, so
| cash in is ~ $4.29B.
| voxadam wrote:
| I've updated the title as best as I could within the
| constraints of the max length.
| mastax wrote:
| Intel acquired Altera in December 2015 for $16.7 billion in cash.
| nativeit wrote:
| If only someone could have come up with a plausibly profitable
| use-case for advanced FPGA's and highly performant, efficient,
| real-time processing or hardware acceleration in those
| intervening years? What are ya gonna do?
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Well the thesis was DC accelerators but the world went with
| ASSPs.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Rest in Peace Altera I guess? I still drink out of my color
| changing Altera mug (that's long stopped changing color) most
| days. PE ruins everything so it's only a matter of time before
| they're gutted and sold for scraps by the vultures at Silver
| Lake. (though honestly the writing was on the wall since the
| Intel acquisition I had held onto some hope) If only we had a
| functioning government interested in actually maintaining our
| technological dominance and enforcing/expanding antitrust
| legislation. I wrote my first Verilog on an Altera chip and I'll
| remember them fondly.
| greenavocado wrote:
| I'm totally with you on needing a government that actually
| cares about keeping us ahead of the curve tech-wise and making
| sure companies aren't getting too big. And you know what could
| really help with that? Tariffs.
|
| Think about it, tariffs can be a game changer for industries
| that got totally wrecked by outsourcing to China. By slapping
| tariffs on imports from countries that don't play fair, we can
| give our own companies a fighting chance to get back on their
| feet. And that's not just about bringing back manufacturing
| jobs, it's about creating a level playing field so our
| companies can innovate and compete without getting undercut by
| cheaper, often stolen, tech from elsewhere.
|
| Plus, tariffs can bring in some much needed cash that we can
| then invest in the stuff that really matters - R&D, education,
| and infrastructure. It's like a reboot for our economy. And if
| other countries want to play nice and start respecting
| intellectual property and labor rights, then we can work out
| some mutually beneficial trade deals that work for everyone.
|
| So, a government that's actually working for us could use
| tariffs as a tool to help our industries thrive, while also
| keeping the global trade system in check. It's all about
| finding that balance and making sure we're not getting taken
| advantage of. Make sense?
| 9283409232 wrote:
| I don't think people are opposed to tariffs, at least they
| weren't before. Bernie Sanders has historically been for
| tariffs when used properly. Used properly being the important
| phrase. When you have someone who doesn't understand what a
| trade deficit is imposing tariffs based on the difference
| between deficit and surplus, you pretty effectively turn
| people against tariffs on top of the whole destroying the
| global economy thing.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| This comment is textbook Poe's Law.
| svnt wrote:
| For those keeping score at home, 51% sold at a total valuation of
| $8.75B, which means they are bringing in around $4.5B, and
| recognizing a loss of roughly 50% on what was their biggest deal
| ever when it took place in 2015.
| Jach wrote:
| "In December 2015, Intel acquired Altera for $16.7 billion in
| cash." $21.5 bn inflation adjusted. Amazing ten year
| performance.
| addaon wrote:
| Sure, it was down 60%. But the real question is whether it
| outperformed Intel as a whole, and outperformed other
| internal investments Intel could make. I certainly wouldn't
| think that a 2015 dollar anywhere else within Intel is worth
| more than 40C/ today, given how they've been running.
| scottyah wrote:
| Or they got what they wanted from it and are selling off the
| rest, like when Google bought Motorola Wireless for the Patents
| then sold off the non-googly employees, culture, and brand for
| cheap.
| roughly wrote:
| Without arguing the merits of the Altera investment or
| divestment, a common pattern for Intel seems to be a wild see-
| sawing between an aggressive and a defensive market posture -
| it's a regular occurrence for Intel to announce a bold new
| venture to try to claim some new territory, and just as regular
| that they announce they're halting that venture in the name of
| "consolidating" and "focusing on their core." The consequence is
| that they never give new ventures time to actually succeed, so
| they just bleed money creating things they murder in the cradle,
| and nobody born before last Tuesday is investing in bothering to
| learn the new Intel thing because its expected lifespan is
| shorter than the average Google product.
|
| Intel either needs to focus or they need to be bold (and I'd
| actually prefer they be bold - they've started down some cool
| paths over time), but what they really need is to make up their
| goddamn minds and stop panicking every other quarter that their
| "ten-year bets" from last quarter haven't paid off yet.
| jrockway wrote:
| This seems to be common for corporate America in general. I
| used to work at a YC startup. We kiiiiiinda maaaaaaaybe ran out
| of money (not my department) and happened to get bought by a
| large investor that also happens to be a US-based hardware
| manufacturer. Two years and countless reorgs later, they laid
| everyone off and as far as I know, are no longer in the
| business of selling the software products they bought. They
| never figured out how software worked, never had anyone
| managining the division for more than 6 months, and got bored.
| I think they thought by moving everyone over to Microsoft Word
| and Windows laptops (peppered with a half-hearted threat about
| RTO), they would just magically make billions of dollars the
| first month. It didn't happen.
|
| I am beginning to think M&A are just some sort of ego thing for
| bored megacorp execs, rather than serious attempts to add
| efficiency and value to the marketplace. (Prove me wrong, bored
| megacorp execs. I'll wait.)
| matt3210 wrote:
| Intel's problem is that they're trying to deliver short term
| shareholder value instead of long term stable value.
| sambull wrote:
| They'll give any market a good 18 months and then dip
| Jach wrote:
| Man I remember being excited when Intel bought Altera, maybe
| they'd bring FPGAs to the masses, then they proceeded to do
| nothing with them...
| varispeed wrote:
| Seems quite cheap. If I was a state I'd buy it. Possibly give
| stake to the suitable university and then create internships and
| other learning opportunities. I would also subsidise products to
| SMEs and then invest more to ensure company can supply defence
| and other industries, decoupling the country from dependence on
| other countries from crucial tech.
|
| I mean it's a pipe dream, but why not.
| bjourne wrote:
| Apparently, the FPGA industry wasn't large enough for two major
| players. Maintaining an extremely specialized developer ecosystem
| for a relatively small niche can't have been cheap. Almost zero
| cross-over too, since FPGA tooling is much too foreign to be
| repurposed for other architectures. I suspect this move will make
| it a bit harder for Intel to collect "developer mindshare" for
| their other hyped up stuff because no one likes having the rug
| pulled out from under them. Hope AMD can make a better job with
| Xilinx than what Intel could with Altera.
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(page generated 2025-04-14 23:00 UTC)