Qualcomm asked chip rival Intel if it would consider a sale

Chipmaker Qualcomm has approached its rival Intel in recent days about the possibility of acquiring the slumping Silicon Valley giant, two people familiar with the matter said Friday, requesting anonymity because the talks were confidential.

Qualcomm has not yet made an official offer for Intel, one of the people said, and the obstacles to a deal remain steep. Any deal would likely draw significant regulatory scrutiny, given the mammoth size and national security importance of both chip companies. It is unclear whether regulators would allow Qualcomm to buy Intel without taking on its struggling foundry business, and it remains equally unclear whether Qualcomm would want to take on that complex endeavor.

A deal would also be costly. Intel, which has seen its shares fall nearly 40 per cent over the last year, has a market capitalization of $93 billion. Qualcomm, which has seen its shares rise 55 per cent, has a market value of $169 billion.

Qualcomm and Intel, through spokespeople, both declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported Qualcomm’s approach.

That any chipmaking rival would consider trying to buy Intel would have been inconceivable a decade ago. But years of management issues and whiffs on technology transitions have weakened what was once one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies.

Intel missed out on selling chips for mobile phones and has failed to capitalise on the boom in artificial intelligence, a field rival Nvidia now dominates with specialised chips used in data centers. Intel’s chip manufacturing operations, once the most advanced, also lost a technology lead to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Intel’s problems were underscored in early August, when it announced a $1.6 billion quarterly loss and plans to cut 15,000 jobs. The company, the largest planned recipient of federal financing under legislation called the CHIPS Act, on Monday announced other moves that include plans to pause the setting up of new plants in Germany and Poland.

Qualcomm, based in San Diego, is a leader in cellular technology and provides chips used in flagship smartphones from companies such as Apple and Samsung Electronics.

Unlike Intel, Qualcomm has never operated factories, a costly business that most chip designers avoid. So it would seem more likely to be interested in the Intel operations that design chips, as well as its broad expertise in PC software and channels for selling those systems, said Patrick Little, a former Qualcomm executive who now is CEO of SiFive, a Silicon Valley startup that sells rival microprocessor designs.

“Those are things Qualcomm would have to mature on their own over time,” Little said. “If they worked with or somehow had a piece of Intel that could accelerate that part of their strategy.”

Any effort to buy Intel would likely face a tough antitrust review and would be scrutinised closely on national security grounds, since its design and manufacturing operations are important for defense applications and overall US competitiveness in semiconductors.