Nvidia has decided to lend a hand to Intel, investing 5 billion dollars in the historic chip manufacturer of Santa Clara. The operation, which brings Nvidia tohold approximately 4% of Intel's capital, provides for a purchase of ordinary shares at $23,28 each. The agreement paves the way for a industrial collaboration unprecedented, with Intel ready to integrate Nvidia graphics technology into its future PC processors and to provide CPUs for use in data center systems based on Nvidia hardware.
The news immediately shook the American market with Intel shares rising by +26% while Nvidia shares gained over 3%.
Intel, between crisis and protections
The alliance comes at a delicate time for Intel. After years of dominance, the company has lost ground to more agile competitors like AMD and Nvidia itself, now the undisputed leader in artificial intelligence chips. To support its recovery plan, Intel is raising capital In any case, in August the US government acquired 10% of the group for 8,9 billion dollars, while in September Japan's SoftBank invested another 2 billion.
And thepolitical support It was certainly the lever to avoid its bankruptcy. President Donald Trump himself took personal action to strengthen US-made semiconductor production, considered strategic in the global race for advanced technologies.
The fusion of two worlds
From an industrial point of view, theagreement marks an epochal turning pointFor PCs, Intel will combine its x86 architecture with Nvidia graphics units, thus offering a more competitive alternative to AMD. In data centers, however, Nvidia will be able to integrate Intel CPUs within its accelerator clusters, in a hybrid architecture that combines general-purpose processing and accelerated computing for artificial intelligence.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spoke about “merger of two world-class platforms" and a collaboration that will lay the foundation for "the next era of computing." For Intel's CEO, Lip-Bu Tan “x86 architecture remains a cornerstone of modern computing, and with NVIDIA, we will build innovative solutions for the workloads of the future.”
Trump's blessing
The move has already received the blessing of President Trump, who, during an economic event at Chequers, the official residence of the British Prime Minister, addressed Jensen Huang directly with a quip that perfectly captures Nvidia's rise: “You're taking over the world, Jensen, I don't know what you're doing here.".
A phrase that sums up the new geography of technological power: the former graphics card outsider now dictates the agenda for the entire industry.
