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Assuming an acquiring company would have a larger market cap than Intel ($91B) lets take a look at current market caps of US tech companies ($B): Apple $3463 -

Assuming an acquiring company would have a larger market cap than Intel ($91B) lets take a look at current market caps of US tech companies ($B): Apple $3463 - no chance. They've poured billions into moving off Intel and are doing well. No strategic benefit. Nvidia $3386 - Likely. Plenty of cash on hand. Would make a pretty epic company if combined and Nvidia culture spreads throughout Intel. Diversify away from TSMC as a single (albeit awesome) supplier which is a big risk. Microsoft $3213 - Plausible. Google $2421 - Plausible. But no obvious synergy. Amazon $2374 - No chance. Invested billion into their own ARM. Facebook $1554 - Likely. Software company trying desperately to get into hardware. Don't have ARM investments. Don't have AI chip investments. Tesla $1404 - Unlikely. Don't use x86 in cars anymore as did a urgent pivot to ARM. Elon's unpredictable tho and has the cash. Broadcom $1114 - Likely Oracle $453 - Plausible Salesforce $313 - Plausible as they're an acquisition company Cisco $241 - Plausible as they're an acquisition company IBM $207 - Plausible as they're an acquisition company AMD $197 - No chance on anti-compete law Adobe $187 - Low chance. Qualcomm $182 - Plausible TI $174 - Plausible Micron $117 - Plausible. Intel started out doing ram chips. Depressing how many companies are on the list - shows how far Intel has fallen.

JohnBooty 2y ago
Among the biggest players, Apple actually kind of makes sense? They've poured billions into moving off Intel and are doing well They have no interest in x86. But Intel has fabs and (I'm guessing) a huge truckload of valuable patents. Apple has been kicking ass with their CPUs but a large percentage of this is due to throwing lots of money at TSMC to tie up their cutting edge fabs. But there is uncertainty in TSMC's future thanks to the China/Taiwan/USA situation, and Apple also has no real control over TSMC aside from giving them bucketloads of cash. That's not a situation Apple loves to be in, and they have the cash to do something about it....
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
> "Apple $3463 - no chance." Owning their own fabs would save them whatever hefty premium they are paying TSMC, the exact same way that moving off of x86 saved them whatever premium they were paying to Intel. > "Microsoft $3213 - Plausible." They're not a hardware company at heart and would crater Intel just as surely as they cratered Nokia. Same goes for Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
- newprint 2y ago
  you know how much money you have to pour into semi R&D to keep up and how much hardware Apple has to produce & sell to justify that cost ?
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    You know how much money Apple had to pour into processor R&D to build something competitive with x86? That bet paid off for Apple in the form of the M1 and its successors. Intel is still profitable so they're covering their own R&D cost and they're still in second place in process technology. TSMC is undoubtedly charging a hefty margin for their cutting edge fab process so the economics might work out for Apple doing its own fabbing.

JohnBooty 2y ago

Among the biggest players, Apple actually kind of makes sense? They've poured billions into moving off Intel and are doing well They have no interest in x86. But Intel has fabs and (I'm guessing) a huge truckload of valuable patents. Apple has been kicking ass with their CPUs but a large percentage of this is due to throwing lots of money at TSMC to tie up their cutting edge fabs. But there is uncertainty in TSMC's future thanks to the China/Taiwan/USA situation, and Apple also has no real control over TSMC aside from giving them bucketloads of cash. That's not a situation Apple loves to be in, and they have the cash to do something about it....

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

> "Apple $3463 - no chance." Owning their own fabs would save them whatever hefty premium they are paying TSMC, the exact same way that moving off of x86 saved them whatever premium they were paying to Intel. > "Microsoft $3213 - Plausible." They're not a hardware company at heart and would crater Intel just as surely as they cratered Nokia. Same goes for Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

newprint 2y ago
you know how much money you have to pour into semi R&D to keep up and how much hardware Apple has to produce & sell to justify that cost ?
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  You know how much money Apple had to pour into processor R&D to build something competitive with x86? That bet paid off for Apple in the form of the M1 and its successors. Intel is still profitable so they're covering their own R&D cost and they're still in second place in process technology. TSMC is undoubtedly charging a hefty margin for their cutting edge fab process so the economics might work out for Apple doing its own fabbing.