Intel rejects Arm approach for chip division

Arm Holdings has approached Intel about buying part of the ailing designer and maker of computer chips.
The Nasdaq-listed British company is interested in Intel’s chip division but not the manufacturing unit, according to a report by Bloomberg, which added that Arm had been told that the business was not for sale. Arm and Intel declined to comment.
Last month Intel revealed plans to cut 15,000 jobs as it seeks to revive its manufacturing operations. It wants to focus on AI processors and creating a chip contract manufacturing business. It was once dominant in chipmaking, but has lost its manufacturing edge to TSMC, of Taiwan. It also has fallen behind Nvidia and AMD in the development of artificial intelligence.
Intel’s shares have halved in the year to date. They fell sharply after the cost-cutting plan was announced and the company warned that its revenue for this quarter would be lower than expected. It also said that it would suspend its dividend.
The company’s troubles have left it vulnerable to takeover. Qualcomm also approached Intel this month to explore a potential acquisition.
Intel is separating the chip product division from its manufacturing operations, which Bloomberg has reported is aimed at attracting outside customers and investors and lays the groundwork for the company to be split up.
Arm is majority-owned by SoftBank, of Japan, but is based in Cambridge. It was founded in 1990 as a joint venture between Acorn and Apple and was bought by SoftBank for £24 billion in 2016. It was floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York last September.
It licenses technology and designs to customers, with clients such as Amazon, Qualcomm and Samsung. It is regarded as a beneficiary of the AI spending boom, especially as it moves further into data centre chips.
In July Rene Haas, 62, Arm’s chief executive, said: “As the energy needs of AI continue to escalate, so does the demand for the high-performance, power-efficient Arm compute platform.” It is valued at $156 billion and Intel at $102 billion.