Nvidia takes $5B stake in Intel under September agreement

(reuters.com)

95 points | by taubek 2 hours ago ago

25 comments

  • onraglanroad a minute ago ago

    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.

  • throwaway132448 a minute ago ago

    I’ve heard that centrally planned economies are great.

  • paxys an hour ago ago

    So the largest individual shareholders of Intel are:

    1. US Government

    2. Nvidia

    3. Softbank

    Interesting turn of events for the company...

    • andsoitis 33 minutes ago ago

      > 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%

      • paxys 26 minutes ago ago

        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 22 minutes ago ago

          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 6 minutes ago ago

            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.

      • brokensegue 27 minutes ago ago

        ownership through funds shouldn't count

        • mattmaroon 26 minutes ago ago

          For sure, it’s just a common conspiracy theory boogeyman from people who don’t know how ETFs work.

  • ExoticPearTree 2 hours ago ago

    Considering how much money Nvidia has, it might as well buy the whole company and bring Intel back from the brink.

    • Workaccount2 30 minutes ago ago

      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.

    • epolanski an hour ago ago

      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.

      • briffle an hour ago ago

        They could just license all the IP, and hire away all the Engineers and executives... :)

        • Dr_Birdbrain 27 minutes ago ago

          Maybe all the engineers, but not the executives who created this problem to begin with

        • clhodapp an hour ago ago

          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.

      • nerdsniper an hour ago ago

        It would kind of match AMD’s acquisition of ATI.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies

        • scrlk an hour ago ago

          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).

      • embedding-shape an hour ago ago

        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?

      • asveikau an hour ago ago

        The current administration would let them do it.

      • allie1 an hour ago ago

        I think they'd allow it so they can build a US based foundry behemoth

  • wewewedxfgdf 13 minutes ago ago

    That should ensure Intel stops being the only viable AI competition to Nvidia.

  • guerrilla 15 minutes ago ago

    Well, that's dark.

  • falcor84 2 hours ago ago

    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?

  • satvikpendem an hour ago ago

    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 38 minutes ago ago

      > 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).