‘I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment,’ Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said.
Japan-based venture capital giant SoftBank plans to make a $2 billion investment in troubled chipmaker Intel.
The investment gives SoftBank about 2 percent of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor’s outstanding shares, according to CNBC. SoftBank will become the fifth largest shareholder in the vendor once the purchase closes.
“We are very pleased to deepen our relationship with SoftBank, a company that’s at the forefront of so many areas of emerging technology and innovation and shares our commitment to advancing U.S. technology and manufacturing leadership,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement Monday.
Tan also said that he and SoftBank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son “have worked closely together for decades, and I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment.”
[RELATED: Intel In Talks With Trump Administration For US To Take Stake: Report]
Intel Investment Deal
CRN has reached out to Intel and SoftBank for comment.
Son said in a statement that “this strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply will further expand in the United States, with Intel playing a critical role.”
SoftBank has majority ownership of instruction set architectures (ISAs) developer Arm and is in the process of acquiring semiconductor designer Ampere Computing.
The SoftBank deal comes amid reports that Intel is negotiating with the Trump administration over the possibility of the U.S. government taking a stake in the semiconductor giant. Trump had called CEO Tan “highly CONFLICTED” and calling on the CEO to “resign, immediately” in an online post before an in-person meeting with the Intel CEO led to Trump posting that Tan’s “success and rise is an amazing story.”
The unusual deal between the U.S. and Intel deal comes as Intel rivals Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices agree to pay the U.S. federal government 15 percent of their China sales revenue for an export control license to sell Nvidia H20 and AMD MI308 chips to the country and Chinese companies.
SoftBank’s Son appeared at the White House in January alongside Oracle co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to announce the three organizations’ $500 billion Stargate AI data centers and power generation project.
Intel revealed in recent days that it is increasing investments in partners in the second half of the year to give them “more value” and “more benefits” as part of a simplified Intel Partner Alliance program the semiconductor giant plans to launch this October.
