Ask HN: Could Qualcomm Buy Intel? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Could Qualcomm Buy Intel?

20 pointsgigatexal23 comments

I saw this floating around. Unsure if it’s serious. Seems like it would be a huge win for Qualcomm: they’d get fabs, all the x86 IP (or maybe that’d have to be spun out), system integrator know how for use with Qualcomm’s ARM stuff, networking, etc etc. all of this would help them with their VMWare side: maybe they go the HP route with green lake and ship the hardware with the software a la Sun Microsystems?

What do the VCs say? The lawyers say? Does it even make sense?

View on HN

AFAIK Intel and AMD have cross-licensing deals for x86 and AMD64 which become invalid in case of acquisition, on the side that gets acquired. This means that you cannot acquire rights to manufacture x64 by acquiring either of them.

That feels so anti-competitive that I wonder if it would hold up in court.

Less than any of their major competitors like Qualcomm or even Nvidia buying Intel.

In any case I find it hard to imagine that regulators in US, EU, UK, China etc. would ever approve this unless Intel was on the actual brink of bankruptcy. e.g. Nvidia wasn't even allowed to buy ARM when the markets they were competing in barely intersected.

The patents expired April 2021

Don’t worry they wrote 50-500 more of them.

I believe most newer x86_64 patents are held by Intel (e.g. AVX). As such if Intel is taken over they would still hold them, right?

Definite Non-Expert Opinions:

From a quick peek (Yahoo! Finance web site), Q has about 2X the market cap of I, so it's plausible-ish there.

Q looks to be a US company, so probably no "can't sell America's critical technology companies to foreigners" veto from the US Govt.

I don't know what the anti-trust situation would look like...but the US Govt. has some history of blatently ignoring such things when they think something is vital to their interests.

Huge question in my mind: Why would Q pay that kind of money? (Yahoo! sez I's market cap is ~$93 billion, and companies are usually bought at a substantial premium to that.) I is in an extremely complex business, and seems to be in seriously deep do-do. Sure, on paper, Q could get their hands on all sorts of awesome assets from buying I. But, on paper, the Titanic and her contents were still worth a fabulous fortune an hour after her infamous bump in the night.

Speculation: Talk about Q buying I is just a means to an end. Test the waters. Pour some blood into them, to see what's attracted to the struggling I. Check whether futile-looking struggles and more bad news could further tank I's market cap. Q might consider buying I, if the price was dirt cheap - but mostly they hope to buy the specific parts of I which they really want, after the sharks tear I into pieces.

The US government (CFIUS) had blocked the sale of Qualcomm to Broadcom, even though Broadcom had agreed to move HQs back to the US because they were concerned that Broadcom would kill the work that Qualcomm was doing on 5G and beyond networks

The EU would probably block this

I think Qualcomm wants Intel to get on the US Federal $ gravy train, or maybe a bigger slice of the pie. PLus Intel's patents.

If Qualcomm pulls this off, I would not be surprised if Intel pieces are sold off, with Qualcomm keeping the patents and enough of Intel to get Fed $.

VMWare is owned by Broadcom.

Dangit. I get them mixed up. I’m not an analyst. Frick my mistake.

This whole post makes no sense I think now. I was thinking about Broadcom. Dangit.

No way this would go through even if it made sense for Qualcomm, which I'm not sure it does.

There's SHITTON of various rumors about Intel because they're during biggest transformation in decades and they're at their low point.

Buy their stock and forget about it for next 5-6 years

Terrible advice. You don't know if they're at their low point. Their low point could be 0.

They JUST released ARM killer and will deliver 18A in next 6-10 months

Ask your question in the discussion! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41604817

As someone else said in another thread, if it benefits US tech China will squash it.

How could China squash the merging of 2 US companies?

Big tech mergers seem to be halted with the current SEC chair. Maybe next year if the administration changes.

I think it’s more of an FTC issue. SEC governs public markets not M&A anti-trust.

I don't think the SEC is a barrier. It's more likely to be the FTC. But, we'll have to see what's its board's constitution is after November. A formal proposal - they're none now - will probably come after that when the composition of the board is known. However, no matter who's in the chair at the FTC, a merger might still be scotched on national security grounds.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com