The rumored interest in acquiring Intel combined with steps taken by the chipmaker to internally separate its products and manufacturing businesses have raised questions about whether the company will remain fully intact or be split up in the future.
Intel’s stock price climbed as much as 9.2 percent Friday morning after a report said a company is looking to acquire the semiconductor giant whole.
SemiAccurate, a semiconductor industry publication, said Friday it was read an email two months ago stating directly “that the company was interested [sic] acquiring Intel.” It added that a “highly placed source” confirmed the interest last week.
[Related: Qualcomm Hires Intel Xeon Chief Architect Amid Server CPU Plans]
“This mystery company has the resources to pull it off, especially at Intel’s current valuation too,” the report said.
Intel’s stock price was up 8.4 percent early Friday afternoon to $21.31 per share, giving it a market capitalization of nearly $92 billion.
The free version of the article did not identify the prospective buyer, and it was not clear if the subscriber version of the article named the company.
Since Intel announced in August that it would cut more than 15,000 jobs and over $10 billion in costs in response to worsening financial conditions, reports have cited acquisition interest by Qualcomm, whose interest has since dissipated, and Arm, which reportedly was rebuffed for seeking to buy Intel’s products group.
The acquisition interest combined with steps taken by Intel to internally separate its products and manufacturing businesses have raised questions about whether the company will remain fully intact or be split up in the future.
Following the abrupt retirement of Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger in early December, interim co-CEO David Zinsner said later that month that the company’s “core strategy remains intact” but added that Intel will put an extra emphasis on the products group while pushing for a quicker return on investment for its foundry business.
In a separate appearance that month, Zinsner said the idea of separating Intel’s contract manufacturing business, Intel Foundry, from Intel Products is a possibility.
“Does it ever fully separate? I think that’s an open question for another day,” he said.
The other interim co-CEO, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, noted in the same December forum that the company already runs Intel Foundry and Intel Products “fairly independently,” with the latter set to become an independent subsidiary.
While Holthaus said a future leader could decide to completely separate the two businesses, she saw the ownership of both as a competitive differentiator.
“Product makes their decisions, foundry makes their decisions, but for both of those businesses, I think, long term, to be very differentiated in the market—great products with a great process technology that we have first access to—is a differentiator,” she said.
Daniel Newman, chief analyst and CEO at The Futurum Group, said in an X post Friday that he was skeptical about the potential for a company to acquire Intel whole, especially given that the “regulatory scrutiny of a deal like this leaves so few realistic suitors.”
“I stand by my assessment that a true split is the most likely outcome. Independent of the Foundry business Intel Products can be a very profitable business. It needs to address data center AI very quickly, but that is its largest immediate need to tackle,” he said.
