Back in March, Intel signaled its intent to become a manufacturer of chips for other companies, now the company is considering a possible acquisition of GlobalFounderies as a way to accelerate that process.
As The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal reports, talks are already underway and a price tag of around $30 billion is being discussed. However, GlobalFoundries is planning to become a publicly traded company in 2022, which could still go ahead unless current owner Mubadala Investment Company can be convinced this is a better deal. For now, the talks do not involve GlobalFoundries executives, allowing the company to deny discussions are happening.
GlobalFoundries was founded back in March 2009 when AMD divested its manufacturing arm and now has operations across Europe, North America, and Singapore consisting of five 200mm fabrication plants and four 300mm fabrications plants. With over 15,000 employees, 10,000 patents, and more than 250 customers on its books, it's a huge operation producing around 7% of the world's chips.
Regulatory scrutiny, or at least the threat of it, could play a part in how far these talks get, especially when you consider Intel owning GlobalFoundries would mean the company ends up producing chips for rivals, including AMD. Even so, with Intel having a market value of $225 billion and already spending $20 billion to build two new fabs in Arizona to support its foundry ambitions, GlobalFoundries must look extremely tempting.