Altera CEO Sandra Rivera Refutes Rumors of Intel Selling FPGA Unit

Altera CEO Sandra Rivera denies Intel is looking to sell the company - SiliconANGLE

Altera CEO Sandra Rivera denies Intel is looking to sell the company The Chief Executive of Intel Corp.'s programmable chip business Altera has denied reports that the chipmaker is looking to offload the company. In an interview with CRN, Sandra Rivera (pictured) said Intel is sticking with its original plan of selling a smaller stake in the company, before spinning it off via an initial public offering in 2026 at the latest. Rivera was responding to a report last week by Reuters that Intel was planning some dramatic changes to its business model, which would include selling off Altera, which is no longer deemed to be a core part of its strategy. She told CRN that the report is "not true" and was "not sourced from anyone that actually knows what's happening". Instead, Intel is committed to its original plan for Altera, and it remains on track to do an IPO in 2026, she insisted. Altera, acquired by Intel for $16.7 billion in 2015, makes field-programmable gate arrays, which are semiconductors that can be reprogrammed on the fly to make them more efficient at specific computing tasks. That's unlike standard central processing units, which cannot be reprogrammed at all, and application-specific integrated circuits, which can only be programmed once. Intel originally wanted to make Altera a core part of its business, and following the acquisition it transformed the company into its Programmable Solutions business unit. However, around a year ago, Intel revealed a plan to spin-off Altera as a standalone company, and promptly named Rivera, who previously led its Data Center and AI unit, as Altera's CEO. The chipmaker said at the time it was planning to sell a stake in Altera to private investors within the next couple of years, while maintaining a majority interest. Intel announced the plan in order to gain more capital to fund CEO Pat Gelsinger's ambitions to revive the company, which calls for billions of dollars of investments. With the spin-off, Intel revived the old Altera brand and waved goodbye to its programmable solutions group. Intel added that the new arrangement would leave Altera better placed to target new opportunities in an FPGA market that could grow to more than $55 billion. Intel, which was formerly widely regarded as the biggest chipmaker in the world, has seen its fortunes dwindle in recent years after falling behind rivals such as Nvidia Corp. in the artificial intelligence industry. It has also faced increasing competition from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in its traditional markets - chips for personal computers and data center servers. In an effort to turn around its fortunes, Intel last month announced plans to cut its operating costs by $10 billion next year. The move came in response to a disappointing earnings report that sent the chipmaker's stock plummeting more than 20%. As part of the initiative, Intel plans to lay off about 15% of its workforce. News of the layoffs was followed by reports that Intel may be looking to sell off other assets deemed to be non-core to its business, including the Intel Foundry business that manufacturers chips, and a part of its stake in Mobileye, a former subsidiary that makes chips for the automotive industry. Rivera told CRN that Altera is still working towards its eventual IPO in 2026, which she described as an "important and fun" milestone in the company's new journey. She added that after becoming independent, Altera will be the sole remaining "at-scale company left in the world" in the FPGA business. In 2022, Altera's main rival Xilinx Inc. was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices Inc., and other competitors only focus on specific niches within the FPGA market.

Exclusive: Altera CEO Says Intel's IPO Plan For FPGA Unit 'Has Not Changed'

Altera CEO Sandra Rivera denies a report that Intel is planning to outright sell its programmable chip business. 'We are executing to the plan, which is not a sale of Altera, but rather it is selling a stake in the business, which has always been the plan, which we've communicated for now over a year, and for us to do the IPO in 2026,' she says. Intel's plan to sell a stake in its Altera programmable chip business and push for an initial public offering of the unit by 2026 "has not changed," Altera's CEO said Tuesday. Sandra Rivera, leader of Intel's FPGA chip business, made the comments in an exclusive interview with CRN in response to a question about a report last week by Reuters. [Related: Intel Plans 35 Percent Cut In Costs For Sales And Marketing Group] Citing unnamed sources, Reuters reported that Intel plans to float to its board of directors in a mid-September meeting the potential sale of businesses not core to its strategy, including Altera. The semiconductor giant is seeking to make massive spending cuts in response to what it has called worsening financial conditions. But Rivera denied the assertion that Intel is planning to outright sell Altera, saying that "there's so much [...] that gets written that is not true and not sourced from anyone that actually knows what's happening." "We are executing to the plan, which is not a sale of Altera, but rather it is selling a stake in the business, which has always been the plan, which we've communicated for now over a year, and for us to do the IPO in 2026. That's the plan," she said. While Altera began operating independently from Intel at the beginning of this year, the business is still "decoupling" itself from a lot of the general and administrative functions under its parent company, but it's "actually ahead of schedule" in that regard, with a deadline to finish such actions by Jan. 1, 2025, according to Rivera (pictured). "We're still on track for supporting Intel in their sale of a stake in the business. And so we've been preparing with the bankers and doing all of the requisite work to get ready for that," she said. "And the team is very, very focused on our long-term goal, our ultimate goal, which is to be number one in the industry. And the IPO is an important and fun exciting milestone in that journey." Acquired by Intel for $16.7 billion in 2015, Altera designs FPGAs, short for field-programmable gate arrays, which consist of semiconductor chips that can be reprogrammed, unlike standard CPUs and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits), for a variety of reasons, including advanced functionality. Once integrated into Intel, the Altera name was dropped, and it became known as the Programmable Solutions Group. Then, nearly a year ago, Intel announced its plan to split off the Programmable Solutions Group into a wholly owned stand-alone company. The parent company named Rivera, a 23-year Intel veteran who reported directly to Gelsinger and was general manager of the Data Center and AI Group at the time, as the company's CEO. In the October 2023 announcement, Intel said it intended to conduct an IPO for the Programmable Solutions Group and explore opportunities to sell a stake in the business to private investors over the "next two to three years," with Intel planning to maintain a majority stake in the stand-alone company. As originally envisioned, the spin-off of the FPGA business is meant to serve two purposes: giving Intel extra liquidity to invest in CEO Pat Gelsinger's expensive comeback plan and expanding the FPGA company's business opportunities. In February of this year, the FPGA company revealed that it would revive the Altera brand and chase after an expanded market opportunity for FPGAs that exceeds $55 billion with products designed for a "broad range of applications in the comms, cloud, data center, embedded, industrial, automotive, and [military-aerospace] market segments." In her interview with CRN, Rivera said by becoming an independent company again, Altera will be "singularly focused on the FPGA business, top to bottom, cloud to edge," calling it the "only at-scale company left in the world" with that position. This is the case, according to Rivera, because FPGA rival Xilinx was acquired by AMD in 2022 while other competitors focus on "low-end or certain parts of the market." "We just see this as a huge opportunity, of course, for ourselves, but more so to service the customers that are hungry for that type of company," she said. Rivera said Altera is also doubling down on the channel, with 80 percent of its volume and more than 50 percent of demand creation going through partners. "I'm just super excited about the investments we're making, but that they're making as well in a portfolio that they know they can count on that is high margin for them, and there's such strong demand for these types of products," she said.