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Nvidia takes $5B stake in Intel under September agreement
- falcor84 10mo agoGoing 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?
- ExoticPearTree 10mo agoConsidering how much money Nvidia has, it might as well buy the whole company and bring Intel back from the brink.
- epolanski 10mo agoUnlikely 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.
- asveikau 10mo agoThe current administration would let them do it.
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- nerdsniper 10mo agoIt would kind of match AMD’s acquisition of ATI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies
- scrlk 10mo agoWhat 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-nvidia-almost-sold-half-of-itself-to-amd-but-jensen-huang-wanted-to-be-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).
- overfeed 10mo ago> only recovering with Zen (and even then it took a few generations for Zen to mature). Zen was a beast from day one. Zen 1 more or less matched Intel on single-core perf and outmatched it on multicore. Zen 1 blew Intel out of water on perf/$, so much so that the morning after booting up my Zen 1 computer, I bought as many AMD shares as I could afford.
- kimixa 10mo agoZen1 was further behind in ST perf than Intel is today in it's desktop offerings. They really exploited their strength in MT and price, and showed that the market was already chafing under Intel's reluctance to go beyond 4 cores on their consumer line, presumably to avoid stepping on the toes of HEDT. But that just caused the competition to pretty much invalidate that entire line instead. And I don't really see the situation being that obviously different if it was Nvidia who they merged with and Jensen was CEO. The big issue was simply that AMD didn't have the cash at hand to both pay for ATI and maintain investment in R&D, at least without their next few products completely dominating the competition. I don't see a different CEO changing that. Unless Jensen was willing to value Nvidia significantly less than ATI at the time.
- embedding-shape 10mo agoDifferent 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?
- allie1 10mo agoI think they'd allow it so they can build a US based foundry behemoth
- briffle 10mo agoThey could just license all the IP, and hire away all the Engineers and executives... :)
- Dr_Birdbrain 10mo agoMaybe all the engineers, but not the executives who created this problem to begin with
- clhodapp 10mo agoI 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.
- themafia 10mo agoWe could just force them into a RAND licensing regime and let the market solve the problem.
- deaddodo 10mo ago"De facto" is the keyword there. Only the nation of origin has any say on company management and infrastructure in a de jure manner. The only power non-origin nations/entities have is via leveraging their ability to do business in the region and/or their local holdings.
- guerrilla 10mo ago> The only power non-origin nations/entities have is via leveraging their ability to do business in the region and/or their local holdings. Which is absolutely enormous, so this distinction is splitting hairs.
- deaddodo 10mo agoDepends on the area/region. But not really. But believe what you like.
- Workaccount2 10mo agoThe 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.
- ricardonunez 10mo agoHow one become a wizard like that?
- fooker 10mo agoRealistically, identify the next technology that will need such wizards and get into a PhD program to research that technology.
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- Workaccount2 10mo agoGet a PhD in some kind of esoteric field like chemical kinetics and then spend a decade learning about oxide surface conditioning under someone who spent their life working on it. None of this stuff is published (externally) and there are no discussion forums or stack overflows to help you either. You need to get through academia, prove yourself, and then you can start working on a chance to get access to the trade secrets that make it possible. After all that you will be placed as a researcher on a handful of steps in the multi-thousand step process of making SOTA wafers. And probably not make crazy money, but at this point, you're not in it for the money anyway.
- octoberfranklin 10mo ago> None of this stuff is published (externally) It's important to note that it wasn't always like this. Up until the mid-90s this stuff was all published in the open literature fairly quickly. There has been a steady culture shift towards ultrasecrecy since then.
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- didntknowyou 10mo agoit prob would if there was some circular deals intel could provide to inflate the ecobubble
- paxys 10mo agoSo the largest individual shareholders of Intel are: 1. US Government 2. Nvidia 3. Softbank Interesting turn of events for the company...
- andsoitis 10mo 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%
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- brokensegue 10mo agoownership through funds shouldn't count
- mattmaroon 10mo agoFor sure, it’s just a common conspiracy theory boogeyman from people who don’t know how ETFs work.
- alecco 10mo agoBlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) team votes even in the name of ETF holders who don't specify their preferences. There are plenty of controversies after reviews of their voting like "voted against a record 91% of all shareholder proposals — and against 93% of those focused on environmental and social issues" (2023). That's from the 2nd result in a simple web search.
- ChadNauseam 10mo agoWhy is that controversial? Is it expected that the majority of shareholder proposals would be things that you would be criticized for not voting for? It's a bit like saying that someone voted against 91% of bills in congress. That could be good if they were bad bills!
- satvikpendem 10mo agoOnce 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 10mo 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 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).
- satvikpendem 10mo agoThe general concept of the velocity of money is not what I'm talking about, it's specifically about vendors buying equity in their users who then buy the vendors' goods, in a tight circular fashion. See the other comments for more.
- fooker 10mo agoMoney flowing in a circular manner is the definition of economy. This is the reason we moved to using money instead of a barter system.
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- guerrilla 10mo agoWell, that's dark.
- wewewedxfgdf 10mo agoThat should ensure Intel stops being the only viable AI competition to Nvidia.
- onraglanroad 10mo agoI'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.
- piker 10mo agoHonestly as a corporate lawyer I have never heard this view expressed, but it’s super interesting.
- onraglanroad 10mo agoWhat are some obvious objections that would spring to your mind? Edit: sorry, that was very abrupt! Nice to have your input. I would be interested to hear what you think would be problematic about the Idea.
- piker 10mo agoIt's inefficient in the case of a wholly-owned subsidiary to require company A's shareholders to hire lawyers, setup bank accounts, books, etc. for a separate company B which ultimately provides the same limited liability vis-a-vis third parties. Joint-ventures become tricky between corporations. Corporations can't hold potentially toxic assets. There are quite a few good ones. Interesting nonetheless. Also as with all corporate law questions, <other jurisdiction> allows it, so we'll just go there instead.
- onraglanroad 10mo agoI'm not sure I understand your first point. If a company can't own another company there's no such thing as a "wholly-owned subsidiary". If you buy a company they become the same company. I'll try to stick to one thought at a time.
- niobe 10mo agoAlso super unlikely, and only worth discussing except as a theoretical exercise. We just aren't undoing centuries of law. Same reason trusts are here to stay.
- throwaway132448 10mo agoI’ve heard that centrally planned economies are great.
- animitronix 10mo agoI'm sure this will be fine when Nvidia stock finally tanks
- hshdhdhj4444 10mo agoThe circle jerk gets increasingly jerkier.
- bandrami 10mo agoAt some point money from outside the sector is supposed to come in to the sector, right?