Qualcomm has contacted US chipmaker Intel in recent days about a possible acquisition, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Intel has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years, and a takeover of Qualcomm would be a major deal for the global chip market. The report cited people familiar with the matter who cautioned that a takeover is far from certain at this point. The size of the deal would likely be scrutinized by antitrust regulators because it would mean fewer competitors in the PC chip market.
While Intel has unveiled its next-generation Meteor Lake and upcoming Lunar Lake PC chips, the company has also been hit with lawsuits from consumers claiming its 2023 Raptor Lake silicon caused widespread computer malfunctions.
With competition from AMD, Apple and Qualcomm itself increasing, Intel has struggled. The company took a hit when Apple switched to using its own in-house chips for its M-series Mac silicon in 2020, while AMD has carved out more market share in PC silicon with its own midrange and high-end chips. Nvidia’s continued GPU dominance has put pressure on Intel to provide more processing power for high-performance tasks like AI.
Santa Clara, California-based Intel has been slower to embrace AI than its rivals, which have ridden the artificial intelligence wave by offering their own advanced AI-integrated solutions. Intel has included some AI features in its Meteor Lake chips, but competitors like AMD’s Ryzen AI mobile chips and others have launched that power Microsoft’s line of Copilot Plus laptops (featuring the integrated AI assistant of the same name).
All of this has led to a dire financial outlook for Intel, which announced last month that it $10 billion in cost savingsincluding laying off more than 15,000 workers, after a disappointing second quarter. Qualcomm, on the other hand, reported positive quarterly profits end of July with growth in the mobile and automotive sectors, which together with sales of chips for the Internet of Things represented a diverse portfolio of products.
San Diego-based Qualcomm late last year unveiled its Snapdragon X-series chips with on-device AI, which debuted in May in its Copilot Plus-branded Surface laptops. The move gives Qualcomm, long known for making the mobile chips that have powered most of the world’s Android phones for years, a foothold in a PC space once dominated by Intel.
Intel declined to comment. Qualcomm did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
