Intel Sells 51% Stake in Altera for $8.75B to Help Revive Its Chip Business

Intel’s financial woes with its semiconductor division made Altera, a company that builds programmable chips, one of the “lucrative” assets to sell. To strengthen its balance sheet and cut losses, Intel has sold off its majority stake in the chipmaker to a private equity firm, Silver Lake.

Altera Sale Gives Intel Close to $4.46 Billion to Fund Its Revival Efforts

With Intel’s new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, settling in, Intel is hoping to recoup its profits in the semiconductor business, and while 18A is the company’s crown jewel, other chip businesses that it had invested in were seen as potential cash cows.

Intel had divested 51% of its controlling share to Silver Lake for a deal worth close to $8.75 billion. The company will retain a 49% share to focus on Altera’s future and profit off of its core business. After all, programmable logic chips, especially field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), hold a decent amount of potential, with its market size in 2024 capping out at $12.1 billion and projected to double in the next four years.

While Intel bought Altera in 2015 for $16.7 billion, it sold a majority stake at a valuation of only $8.75 billion. Lip-Bu Tan’s main goal is to expand beyond the PC and server chipmaking business, and with this sale, the company will be separating Altera’s financial results from its own, though the FPGA giant generated nearly $1.54 billion in revenue in 2024.

The deal is expected to be completed in the second half of this year.

This is all for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.