News TSMC and Broadcom explore deals to rip apart Intel's foundry and chip design wings, says report

[Admin]

Intel is reportedly the target of acquisition interest from TSMC and Broadcom, with both companies exploring deals that could divide the struggling chipmaker’s operations.

TSMC and Broadcom explore deals to rip apart Intel's foundry and chip design wings, says report : Read more

 

[Pierce2623]

This is 100% not news when there’s already headline above it saying Trump won’t even let TSMC manage Intel fabs in the US. What’s the chance they’d let TSMC buy it outright instead? Approximately zero, I’d say.

 

[phead128]

This is 100% not news when there’s already headline above it saying Trump won’t even let TSMC manage Intel fabs in the US. What’s the chance they’d let TSMC buy it outright instead? Approximately zero, I’d say.

This is stock market manipulation, throw around unfounded rumors, tariffs then delay, watch the stock crash, ??? Profit.

 

[hotaru251]

This is 100% not news when there’s already headline above it saying Trump won’t even let TSMC manage Intel fabs in the US. What’s the chance they’d let TSMC buy it outright instead? Approximately zero, I’d say.

it wouldn't ever be approved even if tsmc was an american company.
Theres only a handful of fabs in the entire world. and any of them trying to eat other would likely never get approved in most nations due to monopoly concerns.

 

[Amdlova]

Fabs outside of US need to be removed.
Intel will be a great army chip maker inside of US territory. Why make chips waiting for billions? If you can make chips for a 1 tri annually industry.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I'd say they need to tap TI to take over the foundries. They are very experienced chip makers, granted they're on mature notes, and they're an American company.

 

[AkroZ]

TSMC previously publicly announced they are not interested in buying Intel fabs, what changed ?
They have learned the occidental way of what is called "external grow" ?

 

[bit_user]

it wouldn't ever be approved even if tsmc was an american company.
Theres only a handful of fabs in the entire world. and any of them trying to eat other would likely never get approved in most nations due to monopoly concerns.

Normally, I'd agree. However, these are unusual times and I could believe that a push for more cutting edge fab capacity on US soil outweighs monopoly concerns. That said, I think @Pierce2623 is right that the foreign ownership aspect makes this a non-starter.

Do note where the article says TSMC is looking to form an investor consortium. Here's where the US Steel example might shed insight into the administration's thinking about such matters. They blocked an outright acquisition of the company by a Japanese firm, but are apparently okay with the idea of partial ownership. So, it's conceivable that the TSMC-backed deal could be accepted if TSMC's own share is only a minority stake.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/trump-says-he-wouldnt-mind-if-nippon-steel-took-minority-stake-us-steel-2025-02-14/

In this case, the key question would be whether TSMC is willing to deploy its most sensitive IP, if it has only a minority stake in the operation. On one level, it might not be that different from what they're doing in their Arizona fab. So, maybe.

 

[ekio]

I remember 15 years ago when Intel were so arrogant, max prices, minimum cores.
Scamming the consumers by segmenting features such as ecc mem and scamming the enterprise world with xeon chips that were sold more than gold price.

To see them in this soon to be dead situation with vultures flying around is a delight to see.

I think that if gov helps them, they should get shares in exchange.

 

[Gururu]

More educated views on Wall Street are painting quite the different view. Right now, much ado about nothing.

 

[sjkpublic]

To big to fail. Really bad management. Lost touch with chip logic vs chip production. Hopefully they will turn this around.

 

[TerryLaze]

Cash on hand for TSMC $73.93 Billion USD
Cash on hand for broadcom $9.34 Billion

intel current assets = $193.542B

Even if intel where on the brink of bankruptcy and would let go of everything at cost tsmc would still have to acquire debt double the size of their current cash on hand and spend most of their cash on hand they do have to buy intel, leaving tsmc with almost no money at all and a lot of fabs that needs tons of money just to exist.

 

[bit_user]

Cash on hand for TSMC $73.93 Billion USD
Cash on hand for broadcom $9.34 Billion

intel current assets = $193.542B

Even if intel where on the brink of bankruptcy and would let go of everything at cost tsmc would still have to acquire debt double the size of their current cash on hand and spend most of their cash on hand they do have to buy intel, leaving tsmc with almost no money at all and a lot of fabs that needs tons of money just to exist.

First, there are many ways to finance these sorts of deals and I think it's rarely done entirely with cash on hand.

Second, the article says TSMC is trying to form a consortium of investors, so they wouldn't be going it alone. Due to reasons mentioned above, their stake would almost certainly be a minority.

Finally, we don't know how the assets and debts would be divided between the fab and design sides of the company, which has a lot to do with what each group would take on. In fact, I think nobody actually needs to buy the design side of Intel. I'm sure it would do just fine on its own, which means they could simply sell off IFS to someone and continue in a similar fashion as AMD has done after their sale of their fabs.

That said, I'm not going to think too hard about a rumor like this. I would prefer Intel's fabs continue to exist in some form that offers meaningful competition to TSMC, but whatever happens is completely out of our hands.

 

[Pierce2623]

I'd say they need to tap TI to take over the foundries. They are very experienced chip makers, granted they're on mature notes, and they're an American company.

Texas Instruments is absolutely clueless about operating leading edge nodes.

 

[Pierce2623]

First, there are many ways to finance these sorts of deals and I think it's rarely done entirely with cash on hand.

Second, the article says TSMC is trying to form a consortium of investors, so they wouldn't be going it alone. Due to reasons mentioned above, their stake would almost certainly be a minority.

Finally, we don't know how the assets and debts would be divided between the fab and design sides of the company, which has a lot to do with what each group would take on. In fact, I think nobody actually needs to buy the design side of Intel. I'm sure it would do just fine on its own, which means they could simply sell off IFS to someone and continue in a similar fashion as AMD has done after their sale of their fabs.

That said, I'm not going to think too hard about a rumor like this. I would prefer Intel's fabs continue to exist in some form that offers meaningful competition to TSMC, but whatever happens is completely out of our hands.

You don’t seem to understand that the money doesn’t matter at all. The US government simply won’t let it happen.

 

[bit_user]

You don’t seem to understand that the money doesn’t matter at all. The US government simply won’t let it happen.

They're quite willing for Nippon Steel to take a minority stake in US Steel, as I cited in post #8.

I hope they don't want TSMC's IP to replace Intel's, but I don't trust people like Musk not to push for it. IMO, it'd be better, in the long term, to have Intel competing with TSMC, even if it's more beneficial to outfit Intel's fabs with TSMC's nodes in the nearer or medium term.

 

[watzupken]

In my opinion, the chances of US selling off Intel foundry is low, though I won't say it is impossible. The problem stems from the fact that Intel foundry does not look like they are in a good shape and may require years of heavy taxpayer investment to keep afloat with no guarantee of a turnaround. So yes, in normal circumstances, it is unlikely, but throwing taxpayers money when they are trying to uncover fraud and recover funds, I think they don't go well together.

 

[bit_user]

In my opinion, the chances of US selling off Intel foundry is low, though I won't say it is impossible. The problem stems from the fact that Intel foundry does not look like they are in a good shape and may require years of heavy taxpayer investment to keep afloat with no guarantee of a turnaround.

There's currently no talk of more public funds for Intel, as far as I'm aware. Furthermore, Trump has said only negative things about CHIPS and how he wants to cancel it. This makes the likelihood of any further subsidies (and CHIPS isn't actually very much, compared to the total cost of fab buildouts) extremely unlikely.

The danger isn't that IFS would just shut down. If they ran out of money and couldn't raise new funding, they'd just stop all buildouts and future node development. That would keep them going, for now, but lead to a long term scenario very much contrary to what CHIPS (not to mention some of Trump's tariffs) were trying to avoid.

 

[Gururu]

News is that Celestial production moving to IFS, very excited about that. If they can do a jump with that chip like BM over Alchemist, all good for gaming.

 

[gg83]

This is stock market manipulation, throw around unfounded rumors, tariffs then delay, watch the stock crash, ??? Profit.

Yes exactly. I don't think Intel will sell anything. Maybe look for more investment.

 

[hotaru251]

However, these are unusual times and I could believe that a push for more cutting edge fab capacity on US soil outweighs monopoly concerns.

you miss point that it isnt just US who has a say.
Same reason MS buying AV had issues. Corporations and business merges/buyouts are not "just" up to the one place as the impact has an impact on the global market.

Monopolies are bad for the global economy. Fabs are one of the most important yet limited things in the world and any buyout/merge of them is a huge problem.

 

[bit_user]

you miss point that it isnt just US who has a say.
Same reason MS buying AV had issues. Corporations and business merges/buyouts are not "just" up to the one place as the impact has an impact on the global market.

Okay, so if your point is about regulators in other markets, then I think their influence is limited based on the sort of business footprint Intel has there. For instance, when Intel tried to buy Tower Semiconductor, China was able to block it, because Tower had fabs in China. Intel might've been able to restructure the deal around that, so it didn't include those fabs, but they actually wanted them.

 

[jp7189]

Cash on hand for TSMC $73.93 Billion USD
Cash on hand for broadcom $9.34 Billion

intel current assets = $193.542B

Even if intel where on the brink of bankruptcy and would let go of everything at cost tsmc would still have to acquire debt double the size of their current cash on hand and spend most of their cash on hand they do have to buy intel, leaving tsmc with almost no money at all and a lot of fabs that needs tons of money just to exist.

TSM market cap $1T, INTC $100B. With a 10x market cap they can easy propose an all stock buyout while barely breaking a sweat.

 

[jp7189]

I'm not intending to be political, but I'll say this as it has a direct bearing on the discussion. With the threat to Taiwan, there is a scenario where TSMC Taiwan ceases to exist and becomes a US company. If administration believes that threat likely enough, they may not oppose an Intel fab buyout if it means better tech on US soil.

 

[Pierce2623]

I remember 15 years ago when Intel were so arrogant, max prices, minimum cores.
Scamming the consumers by segmenting features such as ecc mem and scamming the enterprise world with xeon chips that were sold more than gold price.

To see them in this soon to be dead situation with vultures flying around is a delight to see.

I think that if gov helps them, they should get shares in exchange.

They're quite willing for Nippon Steel to take a minority stake in US Steel, as I cited in post #8.

I hope they don't want TSMC's IP to replace Intel's, but I don't trust people like Musk not to push for it. IMO, it'd be better, in the long term, to have Intel competing with TSMC, even if it's more beneficial to outfit Intel's fabs with TSMC's nodes in the nearer or medium term.

US Steel also isn’t the only leading edge steel manufacturer in the US. There’s other massive companies like NuCore.