I’m on the call where Nvidia and Intel are explaining their $5B deal, but the call began with a hot mic:
His majesty was delightful. The cognac was excellent, but just not enough of it. I guess the cognac was from 1912.
Huang joined Trump’s state visit to London this week.
She didn’t say why, but Intel’s Michelle Johnston Holthaus is leaving less than a year after she got promoted to CEO of Intel Products. (It’s possible cost-cutting Intel CEO Tan threw some of her plans out the window.) The only remaining female top exec is the company’s chief legal officer, The Oregonian reports.
During a conference on Thursday, Intel CFO David Zinsner confirmed receiving the investment as part of the US government’s plan to take a 10 percent stake in the struggling chipmaker. The investment stems from the $5.7 billion grant the US government promised Intel under the CHIPS Act.
Bloomberg reports that the investment could come from converting “some or all” of Intel’s CHIPS Act grants into equity, potentially making the US government the struggling chipmaker’s largest shareholder.
Sources tell Bloomberg that the discussion comes from President Donald Trump’s recent meeting with Intel CEO Lip Bu-Tan, which Trump called a “success.” It’s not clear how big the stake would be, but it could give Intel a much-needed lifeline as it lays off thousands and axes planned projects.
Did he promise Trump something during the meeting?
Trump, August 7th: “The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.”
According to the Wall Street Journal’s sources, after the president called for Lip-Bu Tan to resign last week, they’ll meet for a “wide-ranging conversation with Trump, with the intent of explaining his personal and professional background.”
Maybe Tan could offer a 15 percent cut -- it worked for Nvidia and AMD.
Two credit agencies have downgraded Intel’s credit rating to “BBB,” two notches above junk status. (Once companies reach “BB,” they’re no longer considered “safe” investments.) One noted Intel needs “stronger end markets and successful product ramps” to recover.
But Intel appears to be losing market share to AMD, and a new Reuters report suggests it’s struggling to get its 18A process ready for next-gen Panther Lake. (Intel says it’s confident in Panther Lake, though.)
Meanwhile, Intel is shedding more employees and halting investments where it doesn’t have ready customers.
Intel is cutting tens of thousands of employees, cutting investment around the world, and moving away from entire businesses too. After shutting down its automotive chipmaking business and spinning out its RealSense computer vision business, it’s now spinning out its networking business too, reports CRN, with Reuters and TechCrunch corroborating. Intel’s also selling off its majority stake in Altera, and finished off selling its flash memory business this year.
Lip-Bu Tan on today’s earnings call:
I’m also instituting a policy. Every major chip design needs to be personally reviewed and approved by me before tape out.
He says it’ll move Intel “back towards a first time right mindset,” and that he’s already “taken steps to correct past mistakes regarding multi-threading capabilities” in future chips. Tan has a background in chip design and was CEO of chip design company Cadence for a decade.
“Twenty, 30 years ago, we are really the leader,” CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a message to employees, as reported by The Oregonian. “Now I think the world has changed. We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies.”
Phenomenal battery life, plenty of ports, an okay screen, and the worst laptop speakers I’ve heard in my life.
In a memo seen by The Oregonian, Intel manufacturing Vice President Naga Chandrasekara tells workers that the company could cut between 15 and 20 percent of workers in its Foundry division. “These are difficult actions but essential to meet our affordability challenges and current financial position of the company,” Chandrasekara writes, according to The Oregonian.
This latest round of layoffs could happen next month, and follows last year’s job cuts affecting over 15,000 employees.
[oregonlive.com]
Despite replies from Intel’s X account telling gamers to “stay tuned,” there won’t be any news on that front, as Intel’s Thomas Hannaford sent over a statement saying, “The social media posts were in reference to Arc Pro news we plan to share at Computex. We are not sharing any future products or plans.”
Intel’s announcements today consisted of new Arc Pro B60 and B50 GPUs for prosumers and AI developers, its Gaudi 3 AI accelerators, and the public beta launch of its AI Assistant Builder for building and running custom AI agents locally on Intel-powered PCs.
Intel’s XeSS 2 launched last December with just two games in tow — but five months later, your Series 2 Core Ultra laptop chip (e.g. Ultra 9 285H) or Battlemage desktop card (e.g. Arc B580) can can do tailored low latency frame gen in a full 19 titles.
Most are listed in the chart below. Intel tells us the others are Black Myth Wukong, Civilization VII, Fragpunk, Naraka Bladepoint, Steel Seed, The Talos Principle Reawakened, and Wild Assault.
Intel might have already shifted its path away from building AI PCs with on-package memory, but if you have a laptop (like Dell’s XPS 13 9350) with the Core Ultra 200V chipset inside, then this news is for you.
Following last week’s Arrow Lake update, Intel claims the 32.0.101.6734 and newer drivers bring noticeable performance boosts to Lunar Lake machines thanks to a power management update enabling “higher average GPU frequency and improved frame pacing.”
Bloomberg reported 20 percent job cuts were coming this week, but Intel’s Q1 2025 earnings release isn’t saying that. Intel is “taking actions” that include “streamlining the organization, eliminating management layers and enabling faster decision-making,” but doesn’t say how many jobs. It does hope to save an extra $0.5 billion in 2025, more in 2026, and will have “restructuring charges associated with these actions.”
“We have not set any headcount reduction target,” Intel’s Sophie Metzger tells The Verge.
Intel had over 120,000 employees after its 2022 layoffs, and its 2024 layoffs brought that total down to 108,900, but the company may downsize again. Bloomberg’s single “person with knowledge of the matter” says new CEO Lip-Bu Tan will cut 20 percent more.
Last month Reuters reported Intel would make unspecified cuts to address “a slow-moving and bloated middle management layer.” If legit, Intel will likely announce the cuts by Thursday’s earnings call.
[bloomberg.com]
The investment firm Silver Lake will purchase 51 percent of Altera, a programmable chips company Intel acquired in 2015, for $4.46 billion.
The deal comes less than a month after Lip-Bu Tan took over as Intel’s CEO, reportedly with plans to overhaul the struggling chipmaker’s manufacturing business.
In 2021, Intel’s VP of graphics research Anton Kaplanyan tweeted that its XeSS super-resolution and framerate enhancing tech would be “open-source” and “coming soon.” Intel said it would be open-source numerous times.
Today, as Intel adds its newer XeSS 2 to GitHub, it still contains the line:
No reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of the Software is permitted, nor any modification or alteration of the Software or its operation at any time, including during execution.
“We don’t have an update on open source,” Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford tells The Verge.
Lip-Bu Tan, who takes over as Intel CEO on Tuesday, is planning to overhaul the struggling chipmaker’s manufacturing business, while also adjusting its “approach to AI and staff cuts,” according to a report from Reuters. This reportedly includes resuming plans to produce an AI chip, which the company canceled earlier this year.
After a test of its 18A process last year reportedly failed, Reuters says both Nvidia and Broadcom are actively testing it. The 18A process is a key to Intel’s plan to reestablish itself in the race to build new AI chips.
Following reports that TSMC is considering buying Intel’s chip manufacturing business at the Trump administration’s encouragement, The Wall Street Journal writes that Broadcom is separately kicking Intel’s tires, but a bid is only likely “if it finds a partner for Intel’s manufacturing business.”
WSJ’s anonymous sources say Intel interim executive chairman Frank Yeary is leading talks with possible buyers and the Trump administration, but is saying his focus is “maximizing value for Intel shareholders.”
Yesterday, President Trump accused TSMC: “Taiwan took our chip business away.”
But Bloomberg and The New York Times have anonymous sources saying Trump’s pick for commerce secretary is encouraging TSMC to do a deal. Bloomberg’s source says TSMC is open to it; The NYT’s sources suggest Intel might be interested too; its board reportedly approached TSMC and its interim chairman reportedly met directly with both TSMC’s CEO and Trump’s people.
And yet, Reuters now reports that Trump is “unlikely” to support a foreign firm operating Intel’s factories. Intel’s CHIPS Act money also came with strings attached that could interfere, but Reuters reports that Trump may be renegotiating those deals.
4
Verge Score
A capable Lunar Lake chipset and great screen would have made this a killer laptop, if it weren’t for several unforced errors on Dell’s part.
“I am not happy with where we are today,” Intel interim co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus says of the company’s AI server business on today’s earnings call, a business which has not met its promises with Gaudi.
So, says Holthaus, Intel will “simplify our roadmap and concentrate our resources” by canceling Falcon Shores. We plan to leverage Falcon Shores as an internal test chip only without bringing it to market.” It’ll focus on Jaguar Shores, a “system-level solution at rack scale,” instead.
We used to write things like “Intel leads $21 million investment in Tobii’s eye-tracking system,” but that might become harder: Intel Capital, a division which invested $20B in over 1,800 companies, is spinning out into its own firm later in 2025.
It’s not surprising to see Intel shrink a bit amidst its recent troubles. Here’s Intel Capital’s current portfolio.
