Nvidia has agreed to buy a $5 billion stake in Intel as part of a broader deal to jointly develop “multiple generations” of data center and PC products.
Nvidia will acquire Intel’s stock for $23.28 per share, a slight discount on the company’s previous trading price. According to Reuters, the deal will make Nvidia one of Intel’s largest shareholders, holding about 4% of the company. Intel shares went up as much as 30% in early trading on Thursday morning.
The companies will integrate their two architectures using Nvidia’s NVLink interface, which allows data and control code transfers between CPUs and GPUs. NVLink provides faster transfers between chips compared with other standards like PCI Express; this is crucial for AI applications, which need many GPUs to run together and process huge workloads.
For data centers, Intel will manufacture a new line of x86 CPUs specifically designed for Nvidia’s AI infrastructure platforms, which will be offered to enterprise and hyperscale customers.
For the consumer PC segment, Intel will build x86 system-on-chips that include chiplets of Nvidia’s RTX GPUs, which will certainly give Intel an advantage over rival AMD’s CPUs. The companies are currently calling these chips “x86 RTX SoCs” and say they will power a “wide range of PCs.”
The deal comes after a rough few years for Intel, which has struggled to take advantage of the AI chip race unlike its new partner. Intel brought on a new CEO, laid off thousands of employees as it worked to protect margins, and canceled manufacturing projects to focus on better financial discipline.
The deal follows another record quarter for Nvidia, which has grown into both the world’s most profitable semiconductor company and, by market cap, one of the largest companies in the world. Over the same period, Intel has struggled to keep up with the swings of market demand, especially the intense semiconductor needs of AI. As a result, the collaboration could help Intel regain market share from rivals like AMD.
“Intel’s leading data center and client computing platforms, combined with our process technology, manufacturing and advanced packaging capabilities, will complement NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing leadership to enable new breakthroughs for the industry,” said Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan in a statement.
