The acquired them in the first place because they thought Security was the future. It was their big bet they could grow it synergistically to the core business

The acquired them in the first place because they thought Security was the future. It was their big bet they could grow it synergistically to the core business while at the same time the market would wake up to security as important. The problem was that we moved to the cloud where cloud providers produced their own solutions, Microsoft woke up to security as well and it turns out security is really a part of the operating system- and Apple and Google figured that out on mobile. The nail in the coffin in my opinion was the fact that McAfee didn’t have the right security expertise- they had no influence on chip design, they were basically strong in corporate sales, which is something Intel already knew how to do and was useless on mobile. So it was just another case of Intel overpaying for something, letting it wilt in the shadow of x86 and then finally getting rid of it. It’s not actually changed hands since Intel, Intel spun it out, retaining 49% ownership with TPG taking majority ownership with basically exactly thus plan - cut back the wasted investment Intel had made, make it lean and dump it on the stock market before anyone gets wise.