[HN Gopher] Nvidia takes $5B stake in Intel under September agre...
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Nvidia takes $5B stake in Intel under September agreement
Author : taubek
Score : 167 points
Date : 2025-12-29 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| falcor84 wrote:
| Going to the September article, I see:
|
| > The stake will make Nvidia one of Intel's largest shareholders,
| giving it roughly 4% of the company after new shares are issued.
|
| Is that 4% still accurate?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Considering how much money Nvidia has, it might as well buy the
| whole company and bring Intel back from the brink.
| epolanski wrote:
| Unlikely to pass anti trust, they failed already acquiring ARM
| back in time.
|
| Edit: I see a lot of confusion on the topic. The anti trust
| does not need to be from US to be essentially binding, UK, EU,
| etc have also a de facto veto on mergers of global companies,
| even if those are US based, this is especially true in global
| sectors like semiconductors where everybody depends on
| everybody else from patents to machinery.
| asveikau wrote:
| The current administration would let them do it.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| It would kind of match AMD's acquisition of ATI.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies
| scrlk wrote:
| What I find somewhat humorous: AMD originally wanted to
| acquire Nvidia, but walked away when Jensen apparently
| insisted on becoming the CEO of the merged company.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/insider-
| says...
|
| I wonder how AMD would have fared against Intel post-Conroe
| if Jensen was CEO. They were behind but still competitive
| until the Bulldozer flop, only recovering with Zen (and
| even then it took a few generations for Zen to mature).
| overfeed wrote:
| > only recovering with Zen (and even then it took a few
| generations for Zen to mature).
|
| Zen was a beast from day one. Zen 1 more or less matched
| Intel on single-core perf and outmatched it on multicore.
| Zen 1 blew Intel out of water on perf/$, so much so that
| the morning after booting up my Zen 1 computer, I bought
| as many AMD shares as I could afford.
| kimixa wrote:
| Zen1 was further behind in ST perf than Intel is today in
| it's desktop offerings. They really exploited their
| strength in MT and price, and showed that the market was
| already chafing under Intel's reluctance to go beyond 4
| cores on their consumer line, presumably to avoid
| stepping on the toes of HEDT. But that just caused the
| competition to pretty much invalidate that entire line
| instead.
|
| And I don't really see the situation being that obviously
| different if it was Nvidia who they merged with and
| Jensen was CEO.
|
| The big issue was simply that AMD didn't have the cash at
| hand to both pay for ATI and maintain investment in R&D,
| at least without their next few products completely
| dominating the competition. I don't see a different CEO
| changing that. Unless Jensen was willing to value Nvidia
| significantly less than ATI at the time.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Different country (UK vs US) + different administration might
| change the results. Who said you can't just try the same
| thing over and over again until it works?
| allie1 wrote:
| I think they'd allow it so they can build a US based foundry
| behemoth
| briffle wrote:
| They could just license all the IP, and hire away all the
| Engineers and executives... :)
| clhodapp wrote:
| I don't think that's allowed under the terms of the
| x86/x86_64 cross-license deal with AMD.
|
| That's why, for example, any meaningful collaboration
| between Intel and Nvidia under this partnership has to be
| released in the form of an Intel product using Nvidia tech,
| rather than an Nvidia product using Intel tech.
| Dr_Birdbrain wrote:
| Maybe all the engineers, but not the executives who created
| this problem to begin with
| deaddodo wrote:
| "De facto" is the keyword there. Only the nation of origin
| has any say on company management and infrastructure in a _de
| jure_ manner. The only power non-origin nations /entities
| have is via leveraging their ability to do business in the
| region and/or their local holdings.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > The only power non-origin nations/entities have is via
| leveraging their ability to do business in the region
| and/or their local holdings.
|
| Which is absolutely enormous, so this distinction is
| splitting hairs.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The problems plaguing Intel are fundamental problems that money
| cannot easily solve, if at all.
|
| Intel needs expertise that only a few hundred people on Earth
| have, and most of them are in Taiwan, already working for
| someone else.
|
| You don't just buy an EUV and start printing, you buy an EUV
| and give it to a wizard to use as a wand. Intel needs wizards.
| ricardonunez wrote:
| How one become a wizard like that?
| fooker wrote:
| Realistically, identify the next technology that will need
| such wizards and get into a PhD program to research that
| technology.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Get a PhD in some kind of esoteric field like chemical
| kinetics and then spend a decade learning about oxide
| surface conditioning under someone who spent their life
| working on it.
|
| None of this stuff is published (externally) and there are
| no discussion forums or stack overflows to help you either.
| You need to get through academia, prove yourself, and then
| you can start working on a chance to get access to the
| trade secrets that make it possible.
|
| After all that you will be placed as a researcher on a
| handful of steps in the multi-thousand step process of
| making SOTA wafers. And probably not make crazy money, but
| at this point, you're not in it for the money anyway.
| derefr wrote:
| How much money are those wizards making that Nvidia can't
| easily afford to both 1. pay them to come fix Intel's
| problems for a while, and also 2. pay TSMC to rescind their
| non-competes to enable them to do that?
| michaelt wrote:
| Intel's market cap is US$ 174.96 Billion
|
| TSMC's market cap is US$ 1.560 Trillion
|
| It turns out when you are manufacturing nvidia's GPUs,
| Google's TPUs, AMD's CPUs and GPUs, Apple's processors, and
| the flagship smartphone chips from Qualcomm, MediaTek and
| Broadcom - and none of them can go elsewhere because your
| products are so far ahead of the competitors - that's
| pretty valuable.
|
| Convincing TSMC to sell you their chipmaking trade secrets?
| You might as well try to convince Apple to sell you their
| smartphone division.
| rangestransform wrote:
| You need an army of wizards who are willing to do, for the
| most part, lab-tech work for lab-tech salary while having a
| graduate degree in relevant field
| Taikonerd wrote:
| > _for lab-tech salary_
|
| This is something I don't understand. These companies make
| good profits -- why don't they pay their experts well?
| ac29 wrote:
| What you say is a bit dismissive of where Intel currently is.
| They are maybe a year behind TSMC and have been "printing"
| EUV in high volume since 2023 and shipping it in high volume
| since 2024.
|
| Their latest node 18A is already in production and should be
| a lot closer to TSMC's latest and greatest, with the first
| products shipping early next year.
| didntknowyou wrote:
| it prob would if there was some circular deals intel could
| provide to inflate the ecobubble
| paxys wrote:
| So the largest individual shareholders of Intel are:
|
| 1. US Government
|
| 2. Nvidia
|
| 3. Softbank
|
| Interesting turn of events for the company...
| andsoitis wrote:
| > So the largest individual shareholders of Intel are:
|
| > 1. US Government
|
| > 2. Nvidia
|
| > 3. Softbank
|
| Not quite. (1) US Govt at 9.9% (2) BlackRock at 8.4% (3)
| Vanguard at 8.3% (4) State Street Corp probably (5) Nvidia (6)
| Softbank at 2%
| brokensegue wrote:
| ownership through funds shouldn't count
| mattmaroon wrote:
| For sure, it's just a common conspiracy theory boogeyman
| from people who don't know how ETFs work.
| alecco wrote:
| BlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) team votes even in
| the name of ETF holders who don't specify their
| preferences. There are plenty of controversies after
| reviews of their voting like "voted against a record 91%
| of all shareholder proposals -- and against 93% of those
| focused on environmental and social issues" (2023).
| That's from the 2nd result in a simple web search.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Why is that controversial? Is it expected that the
| majority of shareholder proposals would be things that
| you would be criticized for not voting for? It's a bit
| like saying that someone voted against 91% of bills in
| congress. That could be good if they were bad bills!
| hellojimbo wrote:
| They shouldnt be voting at all
| paxys wrote:
| Hence the mention of "individual". Blackrock, Vanguard etc.
| don't own the shares themselves, but rather manage mutual
| funds/index funds/ETFs that millions of people participate
| in.
|
| Otherwise these few companies are the largest holders of
| basically every security in existence.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Interestingly, the US Govt. is also not "an individual
| human" and Softbank and Nvidia are both publicly traded
| companies.
|
| > Otherwise these few companies are the largest holders of
| basically every security in existence.
|
| Indeed. Due to inclusion of Intel in S&P500 index funds and
| ETFs.
|
| Together, institutional investors own over 50% of Intel
| Corporation, giving them a significant collective influence
| on major board decisions.
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/67-institutional-ownership-
| in...
| paxys wrote:
| Big difference between the two.
|
| A company can own lots of things (assets, IP, real
| estate, share of other companies), but shareholders of
| the company don't own or have direct access to that
| thing. If Intel pays dividends, it will go to Nvidia, not
| you. If Intel holds a shareholder vote, Nvidia leadership
| will be the one voting, and they don't have to listen to
| your opinion. They can also change or sell the holding
| without your permission.
|
| If you own shares of Intel through a Vanguard fund, you
| do have actual ownership of Intel. You can cast a vote
| same as every other shareholder. The dividend they issue
| will be passed on to you. Vanguard is simply acting as a
| proxy.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Don't disagree. I think the point I'm trying to make is
| that the idea of "individual investor" captures a range
| of attributes, but some of which are also shared by non-
| individuals or are not shared with "individual humans".
|
| So I generally think wha is more useful is saying in what
| particular ways "individual investor" is meant when it is
| used in debate, decision-making, etc.
| hbarka wrote:
| > Interestingly, the US Govt. is also not "an individual
| human"
|
| The individual human called Citizens United is casting a
| side eye.
| didntknowyou wrote:
| splitting hairs at this point tbh
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Who controls the votes? I don't think most ETFs pass voting
| rights to their owners.
| moogly wrote:
| It just occurred to me that "East India Company" is very close
| to "East Nvidia Company". If only we had made warmongering more
| "socially acceptable"[1] earlier, Mr. Huang might've already
| employed a private military too.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s5TkOj2E5MA
| jiggawatts wrote:
| How long until NVIDIA realises that they have a larger budget
| for military protection of Taiwan than the US Government and
| takes matters into their own hands?
|
| _"The chips must flow..."_
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Once again I am reminded of the circular nature of money flowing
| around in this economy. Michael Burry even commented on this,
| citing it as rhyming like other economic failures previously.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > Once again I am reminded of the circular nature of money
| flowing around in this economy.
|
| Its called the velocity of money, its a thing see:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money
|
| The problem is that there is all this capital and no place to
| put it, so yes it seems circular, but some of that is to be
| expected.
|
| As for Burry, he recently called out the changes to how the big
| players are amortizing their capital expenses for all these
| data center build outs. He is correct in calling it out, but
| he's getting the wrong signal from it. Mores law died a long
| time ago, and now were basically hitting multiple walls at the
| same time: Node scaling at the chip fabs, power and cooling in
| the data center, and just more linear growth from product
| (because of all three factors).
|
| Go back to 2008 ish time period. There were a lot of data
| centers that hit the wall with availability of power and
| cooling and they were hard problems to solve then. The solution
| was not to upgrade rather to "build new", and were seeing a lot
| of the same types of issues today.
|
| Nvidia has unmaintainable margins, the memory manufacturing
| side is now in on the grift too... They are sucking up the
| profit while they can because the dip is going to be BRUTAL
| (likely a boon to consumers but neither here nor there).
| fooker wrote:
| Money flowing in a circular manner is the definition of
| economy.
|
| This is the reason we moved to using money instead of a barter
| system.
| krupan wrote:
| This is a much tighter circle than any of us should be
| comfortable with. There are some horrible examples of
| companies investing in their costumers and then losing big
| when those customers fail.
| pigpop wrote:
| This dig at the relationships between these companies also
| seems odd to me. Isn't this fairly normal practice for
| companies within an industry? There are lots of examples of
| joint ventures, partnerships, alliances, investment and
| mergers and acquisitions between lots of other corporations
| that are in competition with each other. I don't see how it
| could be otherwise unless each corporation was entirely
| vertically integrated so that they never had to work with any
| other.
| krupan wrote:
| We should all be worried. When a company invests in it's
| customers it is extra exposed to the risk of that customer
| going under. If OpenAI fails, Nvidia loses sales and loses the
| money it invested in OpenAI.
|
| I imagine it's a similar story. If Intel fails, Nvidia loses
| sales and this investment.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Yes exactly, not sure why I'm being downvoted, other replies
| are talking about general economic money velocity as if
| that's somehow relevant to this specific case.
| zepearl wrote:
| I interpreted your post like what "krupan" posted in the
| separate sub-thread ("This is a much tighter circle than
| any of us should be comfortable with"), but maybe others
| interpreted it differently (the words of your post are
| quite generic...). Cheers :o)
| guerrilla wrote:
| Well, that's dark.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| That should ensure Intel stops being the only viable AI
| competition to Nvidia.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| I'm willing to be convinced different, but I think it would be
| better if companies had to be owned by a person or people ie that
| companies can't own companies.
|
| It seems a layer of indirection that is more harmful than useful.
| fooker wrote:
| It's harmful until you are the one getting personally sued by
| random grifters.
|
| We limit liability for risky ventures for a reason.
| piker wrote:
| Yes but there's nothing stopping the shareholders of company
| A from forming company B rather than company A dropping it as
| a subsidiary.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We limit liability for risky ventures for a reason.
|
| Because the investor class had the political powers to get
| that protection written into law for themselves, so as to
| externalize risks while privatizing rewards.
| piker wrote:
| Honestly as a corporate lawyer I have never heard this view
| expressed, but it's super interesting.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| What are some obvious objections that would spring to your
| mind?
|
| Edit: sorry, that was very abrupt! Nice to have your input. I
| would be interested to hear what you think would be
| problematic about the Idea.
| piker wrote:
| It's inefficient in the case of a wholly-owned subsidiary
| to require company A's shareholders to hire lawyers, setup
| bank accounts, books, etc. for a separate company B which
| ultimately provides the same limited liability vis-a-vis
| third parties. Joint-ventures become tricky between
| corporations. Corporations can't hold potentially toxic
| assets. There are quite a few good ones. Interesting
| nonetheless.
|
| Also as with all corporate law questions, <other
| jurisdiction> allows it, so we'll just go there instead.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand your first point. If a company
| can't own another company there's no such thing as a
| "wholly-owned subsidiary". If you buy a company they
| become the same company.
|
| I'll try to stick to one thought at a time.
| epistasis wrote:
| As somebody who really appreciates being able to own a ton of
| different companies in small amounts in my retirement account,
| I'm not sure if this is the right way to solve the problem.
|
| Requiring full disclosure of all ownership stakes, traceable
| back to individuals, is probably a better route for this.
|
| And it seems that there's a trend towards that, last company I
| registered had a new process for listing beneficial ownership
| of all significant amounts. Just need to push that legislation
| further.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| I'm not sure what you see as a difficulty here. You own a bit
| of those companies. You're a person.
|
| What do you see as the problem?
| epistasis wrote:
| I want a third party to manage the buying and selling of
| shares as I incrementally put in small amounts of money
| every week into the fund.
|
| Technically I own the fund, and the fund owns the
| companies. As I understand your comment, this would be
| disallowed.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| You could either make an exception for funds, or simply
| make them owned directly. Probably impossible before
| computerisation but fairly straightforward now.
|
| These don't seem difficult problems to me.
| throwaway132448 wrote:
| I've heard that centrally planned economies are great.
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