Dan Luu's extended remarks on his experience at Centaur suggest to me that what Intel wanted was their superior debugging skills. Intel has had a growing quality problem that would be very hard to fix relying on in-house work habits. Bringing in a different culture of zero-defects sticklers might help get them on track.
The last x86 underdog has been bought. It's sad that there's only Intel and AMD now...
In the past I'd agree, but with ARM and RISCV I think that's less of a concern.