Qualcomm Asked Chip Rival Intel if It Would Consider a Sale

While Intel has struggled in recent years, other chipmakers are thriving because of a boom in demand.

The chipmaker Qualcomm has approached its rival Intel in recent days about the possibility of acquiring the slumping Silicon Valley giant, two people familiar with the matter said Friday, requesting anonymity because the talks were confidential.

Qualcomm has not yet made an official offer for Intel, one of the people said, and the obstacles to a deal remain steep. Any deal would likely draw significant regulatory scrutiny, given the mammoth size and national security importance of both chip companies. It is unclear whether regulators would allow Qualcomm to buy Intel without taking on its struggling foundry business, and it remains equally unclear whether Qualcomm would want to take on that complex endeavor.

A deal would also be costly. Intel, which has seen its shares fall nearly 40 percent over the last year, has a market capitalization of $93 billion. Qualcomm, which has seen its shares rise 55 percent, has a market value of $169 billion.

Qualcomm and Intel, through spokeswomen, both declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported Qualcomm’s approach.

That any chip-making rival would consider trying to buy Intel would have been inconceivable a decade ago. But years of management issues and whiffs on technology transitions have weakened what was once one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies.

Intel missed out on selling chips for mobile phones and has failed to capitalize on the boom in artificial intelligence, a field rival Nvidia now dominates with specialized chips used in data centers. Intel’s chip manufacturing operations, once the most advanced, also lost a technology lead to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.