Nvidia takes $5B stake in Intel under September agreement

(reuters.com)

102 points | by taubek 2 hours ago

9 comments

  • paxys 1 hour ago
    So the largest individual shareholders of Intel are:

    1. US Government

    2. Nvidia

    3. Softbank

    Interesting turn of events for the company...

    • andsoitis 48 minutes ago
      > So the largest individual shareholders of Intel are:

      > 1. US Government

      > 2. Nvidia

      > 3. Softbank

      Not quite. (1) US Govt at 9.9% (2) BlackRock at 8.4% (3) Vanguard at 8.3% (4) State Street Corp probably (5) Nvidia (6) Softbank at 2%

      • paxys 41 minutes ago
        Hence the mention of "individual". Blackrock, Vanguard etc. don't own the shares themselves, but rather manage mutual funds/index funds/ETFs that millions of people participate in.

        Otherwise these few companies are the largest holders of basically every security in existence.

        • andsoitis 37 minutes ago
          Interestingly, the US Govt. is also not "an individual human" and Softbank and Nvidia are both publicly traded companies.

          > Otherwise these few companies are the largest holders of basically every security in existence.

          Indeed. Due to inclusion of Intel in S&P500 index funds and ETFs.

          Together, institutional investors own over 50% of Intel Corporation, giving them a significant collective influence on major board decisions. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/67-institutional-ownership-in...

          • paxys 21 minutes ago
            Big difference between the two.

            A company can own lots of things (assets, IP, real estate, share of other companies), but shareholders of the company don't own or have direct access to that thing. If Intel pays dividends, it will go to Nvidia, not you. If Intel holds a shareholder vote, Nvidia leadership will be the one voting, and they don't have to listen to your opinion. They can also change or sell the holding without your permission.

            If you own shares of Intel through a Vanguard fund, you do have actual ownership of Intel. You can cast a vote same as every other shareholder. The dividend they issue will be passed on to you. Vanguard is simply acting as a proxy.

            • andsoitis 4 minutes ago
              Don’t disagree. I think the point I’m trying to make is that the idea of “individual investor” captures a range of attributes, but some of which are also shared by non-individuals or are not shared with “individual humans”.

              So I generally think wha is more useful is saying in what particular ways “individual investor” is meant when it is used in debate, decision-making, etc.

      • brokensegue 42 minutes ago
        ownership through funds shouldn't count
        • mattmaroon 40 minutes ago
          For sure, it’s just a common conspiracy theory boogeyman from people who don’t know how ETFs work.
          • alecco 1 minute ago
            BlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) team votes even in the name of ETF holders who don't specify their preferences. There are plenty of controversies after reviews of their voting like "voted against a record 91% of all shareholder proposals — and against 93% of those focused on environmental and social issues" (2023). That's from the 2nd result in a simple web search.
    • moogly 12 minutes ago
      It just occurred to me that "East India Company" is very close to "East Nvidia Company". If only we had made warmongering more "socially acceptable"[1] earlier, Mr. Huang might've already employed a private military too.

      [1]: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s5TkOj2E5MA

  • onraglanroad 16 minutes ago
    I'm willing to be convinced different, but I think it would be better if companies had to be owned by a person or people ie that companies can't own companies.

    It seems a layer of indirection that is more harmful than useful.

  • ExoticPearTree 2 hours ago
    Considering how much money Nvidia has, it might as well buy the whole company and bring Intel back from the brink.
    • Workaccount2 44 minutes ago
      The problems plaguing Intel are fundamental problems that money cannot easily solve, if at all.

      Intel needs expertise that only a few hundred people on Earth have, and most of them are in Taiwan, already working for someone else.

      You don't just buy an EUV and start printing, you buy an EUV and give it to a wizard to use as a wand. Intel needs wizards.

    • epolanski 1 hour ago
      Unlikely to pass anti trust, they failed already acquiring ARM back in time.

      Edit: I see a lot of confusion on the topic. The anti trust does not need to be from US to be essentially binding, UK, EU, etc have also a de facto veto on mergers of global companies, even if those are US based, this is especially true in global sectors like semiconductors where everybody depends on everybody else from patents to machinery.

      • deaddodo 11 minutes ago
        "De facto" is the keyword there. Only the nation of origin has any say on company management and infrastructure in a de jure manner. The only power non-origin nations/entities have is via leveraging their ability to do business in the region and/or their local holdings.
        • guerrilla 5 minutes ago
          > The only power non-origin nations/entities have is via leveraging their ability to do business in the region and/or their local holdings.

          Which is absolutely enormous, so this distinction is splitting hairs.

      • briffle 1 hour ago
        They could just license all the IP, and hire away all the Engineers and executives... :)
        • Dr_Birdbrain 41 minutes ago
          Maybe all the engineers, but not the executives who created this problem to begin with
        • clhodapp 1 hour ago
          I don't think that's allowed under the terms of the x86/x86_64 cross-license deal with AMD.

          That's why, for example, any meaningful collaboration between Intel and Nvidia under this partnership has to be released in the form of an Intel product using Nvidia tech, rather than an Nvidia product using Intel tech.

      • nerdsniper 1 hour ago
        It would kind of match AMD’s acquisition of ATI.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies

        • scrlk 1 hour ago
          What I find somewhat humorous: AMD originally wanted to acquire Nvidia, but walked away when Jensen apparently insisted on becoming the CEO of the merged company.

          https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/insider-says...

          I wonder how AMD would have fared against Intel post-Conroe if Jensen was CEO. They were behind but still competitive until the Bulldozer flop, only recovering with Zen (and even then it took a few generations for Zen to mature).

      • embedding-shape 1 hour ago
        Different country (UK vs US) + different administration might change the results. Who said you can't just try the same thing over and over again until it works?
      • asveikau 1 hour ago
        The current administration would let them do it.
      • allie1 1 hour ago
        I think they'd allow it so they can build a US based foundry behemoth
  • throwaway132448 16 minutes ago
    I’ve heard that centrally planned economies are great.
  • wewewedxfgdf 28 minutes ago
    That should ensure Intel stops being the only viable AI competition to Nvidia.
  • guerrilla 29 minutes ago
    Well, that's dark.
  • falcor84 2 hours ago
    Going to the September article, I see:

    > The stake will make Nvidia one of Intel's largest shareholders, giving it roughly 4% of the company after new shares are issued.

    Is that 4% still accurate?

  • satvikpendem 1 hour ago
    Once again I am reminded of the circular nature of money flowing around in this economy. Michael Burry even commented on this, citing it as rhyming like other economic failures previously.
    • zer00eyz 53 minutes ago
      > Once again I am reminded of the circular nature of money flowing around in this economy.

      Its called the velocity of money, its a thing see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money

      The problem is that there is all this capital and no place to put it, so yes it seems circular, but some of that is to be expected.

      As for Burry, he recently called out the changes to how the big players are amortizing their capital expenses for all these data center build outs. He is correct in calling it out, but he's getting the wrong signal from it. Mores law died a long time ago, and now were basically hitting multiple walls at the same time: Node scaling at the chip fabs, power and cooling in the data center, and just more linear growth from product (because of all three factors).

      Go back to 2008 ish time period. There were a lot of data centers that hit the wall with availability of power and cooling and they were hard problems to solve then. The solution was not to upgrade rather to "build new", and were seeing a lot of the same types of issues today.

      Nvidia has unmaintainable margins, the memory manufacturing side is now in on the grift too... They are sucking up the profit while they can because the dip is going to be BRUTAL (likely a boon to consumers but neither here nor there).