Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has invested $2 billion in chip maker Intel.
The company says the new arrangement announced on Monday (August 18) represents its commitment to investing in advanced technology and semiconductor innovation in the United States
“Semiconductors are the foundation of all industries,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank, in a news release. “For over 50 years, Intel has been a trusted leader in innovation. This strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply is expanding further in the US and Intel plays a key role.”
As Pymnts wrote earlier this year, Intel has been struggling for several years, and that rocky era began as important product deadlines began to disappear in the mid-2010s.
“Intel, an industry leader, lagged behind a software-and-AI-driven future, stumbling on by internal bureaucracy, strict culture and hardware-first thinking, but competitors like ARM and Nvidia thrived,” the report said.
The company also turned down Apple's request to create a chip for the iPhone and set the stage for Qualcomm. In the third quarter last year, Intel recorded its biggest quarterly loss of $16.6 billion.
Intel's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, said he recognized many of the company's issues during his keynote speech at Intel's conference in Las Vegas in April.
“We lagged behind innovation. We were too late to adapt to meet your needs. You deserve better and need to improve. “Please be cruelly honest with us.”
This release highlights SoftBank's ongoing commitment to the AI sector. For example, a $40 billion investment Openaidescribed as the largest private technology transaction to date.
Among other projects is “Stargate,” where Softbank teams up with Openai and Oracle to build AI infrastructure over the next four years, investing $100 billion and up to $500 billion.
However, a report from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) last month said the Stargate project had a slow start. Six months after its initial launch, the company running the effort has not signed a contract to build the data center and has pivoted to build one data center from investing $100 billion immediately by the end of this year.
The report said this late start was due to differences in opinion between SoftBank and Openai regarding where the data center is to be built. The company issued a joint statement to the WSJ, saying it has made progress in several states and is moving quickly to provide AI infrastructure.
