Intel scoops in $8.5 billion in new funding over the last few days, as Qualcomm eyes takeover

Apollo Global Management Inc. has offered to make a multi-billion-dollar into Intel according to the usual "people familiar with the matter" reports Bloomberg, in timing that couldn't be more perfect for the company experiencing its biggest issues in its 50+ year history.

Apollo Group manages assets worth close to $350 billion, and is putting forward an "equity-like" investment of up to $5 billion towards Intel, which should (but doesn't have to, nor should it completely) restore some confidence in Intel's turnaround strategy. Oh, and Intel qualifies for $3.5 billion in federal grants to make semiconductors for the US military.

Except, it's bleeding all over the place, losing chip deals like the next-gen PlayStation 6 to AMD, losing desktop and server + HPC market share to AMD, and struggling to even become (not stay) relevant in the discrete GPU industry.

This is without the 15,000+ job cuts and billions of dollars of shares vaporized in the last few months, ramping into the launch of one of Intel's most important product launches of the year: its new Core Ultra 200 series "Arrow Lake" desktop CPUs, new LGA 1851 socket, and new 800-series chipset led by the Z890 flagship motherboard.

The company is slicing and dicing 15,000+ jobs and performing other tricks to reduce spending by $10 billion, halting construction work on its fabs in Poland and Germany for two years, and delaying the operationalization of new advanced packaging facilities in Malaysia, saying it goes with the "market conditions".

However, Intel has Amazon and Broadcom as customers for its new Intel 18A process node, which is compatible with TSMC's upcoming 2nm process node that we'll see debut inside of Intel's next-gen iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max as what should materialize into the A20 Pro chipset (we're at A18 Pro now inside of the iPhone 16 Pro, Pro Max).

On top of that, Qualcomm has reportedly been knocking on Intel's door with what I'm sure is a rather big cheque, in a takeover bid that CEO Cristiano Amon is personally involved in. It's all happening for Intel (whether it's good, or bad) and we can't wait to see what the outcome is... CES 2025 could feel like a very new time for Intel, but CES 2026... well, that could be time when things really start to change for Team Blue.