Altera CEO Sandra Rivera denies Intel is looking to sell the company

The Chief Government of Intel Corp.’s programmable chip enterprise Altera has denied studies that the chipmaker is trying to offload the corporate.

In an interview with CRN, Sandra Rivera (pictured) stated Intel is sticking with its authentic plan of promoting a smaller stake within the firm, earlier than spinning it off through an preliminary public providing in 2026 on the newest.

Rivera was responding to a report final week by Reuters that Intel was planning some dramatic changes to its enterprise mannequin, which would come with promoting off Altera, which is not deemed to be a core a part of its technique.

She informed CRN that the report is “not true” and was “not sourced from anybody that truly is aware of what’s occurring”. As a substitute, Intel is dedicated to its authentic plan for Altera, and it stays on observe to do an IPO in 2026, she insisted.

Altera, acquired by Intel for $16.7 billion in 2015, makes field-programmable gate arrays, that are semiconductors that may be reprogrammed on the fly to make them extra environment friendly at particular computing duties. That’s not like commonplace central processing items, which can’t be reprogrammed in any respect, and application-specific built-in circuits, which might solely be programmed as soon as.

Intel initially wished to make Altera a core a part of its enterprise, and following the acquisition it reworked the corporate into its Programmable Options enterprise unit. Nonetheless, round a yr in the past, Intel revealed a plan to spin-off Altera as a standalone firm, and promptly named Rivera, who beforehand led its Information Heart and AI unit, as Altera’s CEO.

The chipmaker stated on the time it was planning to promote a stake in Altera to non-public traders throughout the subsequent couple of years, whereas sustaining a majority curiosity.

Intel introduced the plan in an effort to acquire extra capital to fund CEO Pat Gelsinger’s ambitions to revive the company, which requires billions of {dollars} of investments. With the spin-off, Intel revived the previous Altera model and waved goodbye to its programmable options group. Intel added that the brand new association would go away Altera higher positioned to focus on new alternatives in an FPGA market that would develop to greater than $55 billion.

Intel, which was previously broadly thought to be the largest chipmaker on the earth, has seen its fortunes dwindle in recent times after falling behind rivals akin to Nvidia Corp. within the synthetic intelligence business. It has additionally confronted growing competitors from Superior Micro Units Inc. in its conventional markets – chips for private computer systems and information middle servers.

In an effort to show round its fortunes, Intel final month introduced plans to chop its working prices by $10 billion subsequent yr. The transfer got here in response to a disappointing earnings report that despatched the chipmaker’s inventory plummeting greater than 20%. As a part of the initiative, Intel plans to put off about 15% of its workforce.

Information of the layoffs was adopted by studies that Intel could also be trying to dump different property deemed to be non-core to its enterprise, including the Intel Foundry business that producers chips, and a part of its stake in Mobileye, a former subsidiary that makes chips for the automotive business.

Rivera informed CRN that Altera remains to be working in the direction of its eventual IPO in 2026, which she described as an “essential and enjoyable” milestone within the firm’s new journey.

She added that after changing into impartial, Altera would be the sole remaining “at-scale firm left on the earth” within the FPGA enterprise. In 2022, Altera’s predominant rival Xilinx Inc. was acquired by Superior Micro Units Inc., and different rivals solely deal with particular niches throughout the FPGA market.

Picture: SiliconANGLE