Raghib Hussain appointed chief executive officer of Altera.
SANTA CLARA, Calif.; SAN JOSE, Calif.; and MENLO PARK, Calif., April 14, 2025 – Intel Corporation today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell 51% of its Altera business to Silver Lake, a global leader in technology investing.
The transaction, which values Altera at $8.75 billion, establishes Altera’s operational independence and makes it the largest pure-play FPGA (field programmable gate array) semiconductor solutions company. Altera offers a proven and highly scalable architecture and tool chain and is focused on driving growth and FPGA innovation to meet the demands and opportunities of an AI-driven market.
Intel will own the remaining 49% of the Altera business, enabling it to participate in Altera’s future success while focusing on its core business.
Intel also announced that Raghib Hussain will succeed Sandra Rivera as chief executive officer of Altera, effective May 5, 2025. Hussain is a highly accomplished and visionary technology executive with strong business acumen and engineering credentials. He joins Altera from his previous role as president of Products and Technologies at Marvell. Prior to joining Marvell in 2018, Hussain served as chief operating officer of Cavium, a company he co-founded. Prior to Cavium, Hussain held engineering roles at both Cisco and Cadence and helped found VPNet, an enterprise security company.
“Today’s announcement reflects our commitment to sharpening our focus, lowering our expense structure and strengthening our balance sheet,” said Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive officer of Intel. “Altera continues to make progress repositioning its product portfolio to participate in the fastest growing and most profitable segments of the FPGA market. We are grateful for Sandra’s strong leadership and lasting impact throughout her 25-year Intel career and wish her continued success as she begins a new chapter. Raghib is a superb executive we selected to lead the business forward based on his vast industry experience and proven track record of success. We look forward to partnering with Silver Lake upon closing of the transaction, as their industry expertise will help to accelerate Altera’s efforts and unlock additional economic value for Intel.”
“This investment represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in a scale leader in advanced semiconductors. Together with Raghib, we will be focused on strengthening Altera’s technology leadership position and investing in emerging AI-driven markets such as edge computing and robotics,” said Kenneth Hao, chairman and managing partner of Silver Lake. “We look forward to working closely with Intel as a strategic partner who will continue to provide U.S.-based foundry services and complementary engagement with customers.”
“I am excited to lead Altera in its next chapter, and this milestone with Silver Lake further
16 Comments
bigfatkitten
It was a silly acquisition in the first place, and their justification clearly came from a coke-addled fever dream.
Intel soon discovered the obvious, which is that customers with applications well-suited to FPGAs already use FPGAs.
Alupis
I wonder if we'll see more Intel sell-offs, as Tan et al try to get things under control.
Will we see an AMD-esque fab spin-off?
rsp1984
Should change title. They sold 51% at a valuation of $8.75B, so cash in is ~ $4.29B.
mastax
Intel acquired Altera in December 2015 for $16.7 billion in cash.
thot_experiment
Rest in Peace Altera I guess? I still drink out of my color changing Altera mug (that's long stopped changing color) most days. PE ruins everything so it's only a matter of time before they're gutted and sold for scraps by the vultures at Silver Lake. (though honestly the writing was on the wall since the Intel acquisition I had held onto some hope) If only we had a functioning government interested in actually maintaining our technological dominance and enforcing/expanding antitrust legislation. I wrote my first Verilog on an Altera chip and I'll remember them fondly.
svnt
For those keeping score at home, 51% sold at a total valuation of $8.75B, which means they are bringing in around $4.5B, and recognizing a loss of roughly 50% on what was their biggest deal ever when it took place in 2015.
roughly
Without arguing the merits of the Altera investment or divestment, a common pattern for Intel seems to be a wild see-sawing between an aggressive and a defensive market posture – it’s a regular occurrence for Intel to announce a bold new venture to try to claim some new territory, and just as regular that they announce they’re halting that venture in the name of “consolidating” and “focusing on their core.” The consequence is that they never give new ventures time to actually succeed, so they just bleed money creating things they murder in the cradle, and nobody born before last Tuesday is investing in bothering to learn the new Intel thing because its expected lifespan is shorter than the average Google product.
Intel either needs to focus or they need to be bold (and I’d actually prefer they be bold – they’ve started down some cool paths over time), but what they really need is to make up their goddamn minds and stop panicking every other quarter that their “ten-year bets” from last quarter haven’t paid off yet.
matt3210
Intel's problem is that they're trying to deliver short term shareholder value instead of long term stable value.
Jach
Man I remember being excited when Intel bought Altera, maybe they'd bring FPGAs to the masses, then they proceeded to do nothing with them…
varispeed
Seems quite cheap. If I was a state I'd buy it. Possibly give stake to the suitable university and then create internships and other learning opportunities. I would also subsidise products to SMEs and then invest more to ensure company can supply defence and other industries, decoupling the country from dependence on other countries from crucial tech.
I mean it's a pipe dream, but why not.
bjourne
Apparently, the FPGA industry wasn't large enough for two major players. Maintaining an extremely specialized developer ecosystem for a relatively small niche can't have been cheap. Almost zero cross-over too, since FPGA tooling is much too foreign to be repurposed for other architectures. I suspect this move will make it a bit harder for Intel to collect "developer mindshare" for their other hyped up stuff because no one likes having the rug pulled out from under them. Hope AMD can make a better job with Xilinx than what Intel could with Altera.
Calwestjobs
Anyone who hoped Lunar Lake to buy Altera give thumbs up.
mmmBacon
When Intel acquired Altera, Altera’s market share was at 36% and Xilinx at 51%. Today Xilinx remains at ~50% while Altera’s share has dropped to 29%. Altera has lost share to Microchip and Lattice.
I’ve said it before, Intel is where technology companies go to die. Fortunately while Altera is probably a mess of useless Intel drone MBAs, there’s a decent core that can be salvaged. Best of luck to them.
d-moon
As someone who's worked at Xilinx before and after the merger, it's a surprise they were even able to sell it for that much. Altera has been noncompetitive to Xilinx in performance and to Lattice in terms of low-end/low-power offerings for at least the last 2 generations.
I'm concerned about the future of FPGAs and wonder who will lead the way to fix these abhorrent toolchains these FPGA companies force upon developers.
sandworm101
I cannot help myself. My brain parks "Altera" right beside the Weyland and Jupiter Mining corps.
https://subnautica.fandom.com/wiki/Alterra_Corporation
ACAVJW4H
Quick search shows Altera held 30% of the FPGA market. That puts AMD’s $50B acquisition of Xilinx (which holds ~50% of the market) in an awkward light. Using some extremely crude math, Xilinx’s fair market value might now be closer to ~$15B.
Did AMD massively overpay, or has the FPGA market fundamentally shifted? Curious to see how this new benchmark ripples into AMD’s stock valuation.