Nvidia has purchased $7.58 billion worth of Intel shares at a low price. Because it had already agreed to an investment in September, it can purchase this portion of Intel for $5 billion.
Nvidia completed the purchase of 214 million Intel shares on December 26, after the US regulator FTC gave the green light on December 18. That approval was relatively predictable: Intel is in dire straits and needs help. The US government itself also bought a 10 percent stake in ‘Chipzilla’ to strengthen it. Nvidia opted for 4 percent, at the time roughly $5 billion at $23.28 per share. Today, this amount per share is $36.68.
Joint chip development for data centers and PCs
The collaboration goes beyond a financial investment. Nvidia and Intel are jointly developing “multiple generations” of chips for data centers and PCs. The goal is to capture market share from consumers to hyperscale customers. This will allow Nvidia to alternate Intel’s iGPUs to serve thin-and-light laptops, for example. The combination of an Intel chip with an Nvidia GPU has previously only been available for discrete GPUs.
The two companies connect their chips via NVLink, Nvidia’s fast interconnect technology. It achieves 1.8 TB/s bandwidth per GPU, about fourteen times faster than a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot. For PCs, Intel builds custom x86 CPUs that Nvidia integrates into AI infrastructure platforms.
In addition, Intel produces x86 systems-on-chips with integrated Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets. These new x86 RTX chips power PCs with combined CPUs and GPUs in a single package. The deal is intended to bring together the best of both worlds.
Long road back
Intel has the advantage of being the incumbent: even after years of inferior processors compared to AMD, it has a significantly larger market share in every client segment. Only DIY PCs seem to have turned their backs on Intel, based on online store results; laptops and OEM desktops remain Intel’s domain so far.
Nevertheless, there is certainly room for improvement, namely in the form of future chip generations. Lunar Lake (thin-and-lights) and Arrow Lake (desktops, laptops) will be alternated by Panther Lake and Nova Lake this year, respectively, which are expected to hit the market under the name Intel Core Ultra Series 3.
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