Private equity firm Silver Lake Management is in talks to buy a controlling stake in Altera from Intel. The latter designs and supplies FPGAs, and the potential buyer has apparently won out over several other suitors, Silicon Angle reports. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Silver Lake is currently finalizing the details of the deal. At the same time, there is no information on when the deal and Silver Lake’s stake will be officially announced, and there are no guarantees that the deal will take place.
Silver Lake is reportedly competing with other investors, including Bain Capital LLC and Francisco Partners LLC, which are also eyeing a stake in Altera. Silver Lake has a long history in the tech industry, having participated in buyouts of Dell Technologies Inc., Qualtrics International Inc., Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., Broadcom Inc., and NXP Semiconductors NV. It first publicly indicated in January 2025 that it was interested in buying Altera.
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In 2015, Intel acquired Altera for nearly $17 billion, an unofficial valuation that now sits at $9 billion. AMD bought Altera’s direct competitor Xilinx Inc. for $49 billion in 2022. Pat Gelsinger had planned to sell a small stake in Altera, spinning it off again as a separate company under the same name with the hopes of an IPO in the future. But Gelsinger was fired by the board last December. The new management is desperately looking for cash and cost-cutting options, including selling off its subsidiaries and its venture arm, Intel Capital.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Broadcom and TSMC were considering buying parts of Intel’s business, with Broadcom allegedly eyeing its core chip development unit and TSMC its factories. While Intel shares fell more than 60% in 2024, they have risen nearly 30% since the start of the year on the back of the news.
However, some experts believe that the American tech industry would be better off if Intel remained an independent company, keeping its chip business. Last month, the company reported its fourth-quarter financial results, which were weak due to weak demand for data center chips. In addition, the company has yet to find a permanent replacement for Gelsinger.