Intel has received a rare vote of confidence in the form of a $2 billion investment from SoftBank.
The news arrives hot on the heels of reports that the US government recently held talks about taking a stake in Intel, as the chip maker struggles to revive its ailing fortunes.
Under the deal with SoftBank, Intel will issue the Japanese telco with common stock priced at $23 per share. That gives SoftBank nearly 87 million shares, placing it among the top-10 Intel investors, based on data from Investing.com.
Intel has been left for dust by Nvidia in the AI market, as GPUs – Nvidia's core strength – tend to be the preferred semiconductor choice for cloud-based AI workloads. Meanwhile, it also faces stiffer competition from both AMD and Qualcomm in not just the traditional PC CPU market, but also increasingly when it comes to on-device AI.
