Intel Corp is in advanced talks with Apollo Global Management Inc over a deal that would have the investment firm providing more than US$11 billion in funding for a chip manufacturing plant in Ireland, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
The two companies are in exclusive talks and could reach an agreement in the coming weeks, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the discussions who it didn’t identify.
The potential partnership comes as superpowers around the world earmark hundreds of billions of dollars for companies like Intel to build the next generation of semiconductor manufacturing in their backyards. The US and European Union have led these funding efforts, in part as a means of challenging China for chip dominance but also as a broader effort to lessen their dependency on Asian supplies.
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Apollo and Intel declined to comment. Other alternative asset managers in addition to Apollo, including KKR & Co and Stonepeak Partners LLC, had also previously held talks to fund the Intel facility in Ireland, Bloomberg News reported last month.
Intel chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has been working to diversify the company’s manufacturing operations outside of Asia, which dominates chip production today. He’s also striving to restore the chip pioneer’s technological leadership after companies including Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) eclipsed its capabilities.
As part of Gelsinger’s turnaround efforts, Intel is becoming a so-called foundry — a contract manufacturer that makes chips for other companies. Last month, Intel’s shares tanked after the company said its new foundry division had sales of US$18.9 billion last year, down from US$27.5 billion the previous year, and that operating losses at the new unit had widened. The chipmaker warned at the time that it may not reach a break-even point for several more years.
Intel has already poured billions into chip plants around the world. The company said in December last year that it was investing US$25 billion in Israel after securing US$3.2 billion worth of incentives from the nation’s government. In June last year, it struck a deal with Germany to invest around 30 billion euros (US$32 billion) in semiconductor operations.
A pact with Apollo would follow on a previous transaction in which Brookfield Infrastructure Partners LP agreed to invest as much as US$15 billion for a stake in Intel’s manufacturing expansion in Arizona.
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