Intel pays VIA $125 million for Centaur employees, but not the company itself

[Daniel Sims]

What just happened? In what appears to be a mysterious and unusual deal, Intel has agreed to pay VIA Technologies $125 million to poach some employees from one of its subsidiaries. The subsidiary itself isn't being sold, however, and further details are scarce at this time.

Taiwan company VIA Technologies sent out a press release this week briefly discussing the deal with Intel. All it says is that Intel will be able to "recruit" some employees of VIA's x86 subsidiary, Centaur Technology, while paying VIA $125 million. Intel won't actually buy Centaur wholesale and VIA will keep Centaur's business.

Centaur's website has been mostly wiped clean and currently just consists of a message telling visitors it's under construction.

Intel confirmed the deal to AnandTech but gave no further details following VIA's announcement, and Centaur still hasn't commented. According to AnandTech, Taiwan news site United Daily News further confirmed that Intel isn't getting the actual Centaur company, so other than some expertise, it's a bit unclear what exactly Intel is paying for.

VIA may be keeping ownership of Centaur along with its designs and patents, but the apparent reboot of Centaur's website signals some kind of significant change. No date on when the deal will close has been given.

VIA's press release mentions there are certain conditions in its contract with Intel, but doesn't go into what those conditions are. It only says Intel will pay the full $125 million when the deal closes.

Centaur has been with VIA since 1999. In 2019, Centaur revealed a class of server processors that WikiChip Fuse considered to be competitive with Intel's Skylake processors and AMD's first generation Zen CPUs.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/92104-intel-pays-125-million-centaur-employees-but-not.html

 

[gamerk2]

How to get around anti-trust concerns? Buy the employees, not the company.

 

[winjer]

How to get around anti-trust concerns? Buy the employees, not the company.

In an age where Via is irrelevant in the X86 market, I would doubt there would be any anti-trust concerns.
Also, in an age where X86 has very strong competition from ARM, it would not matter.

 

[quadibloc]

In an age where Via is irrelevant in the X86 market, I would doubt there would be any anti-trust concerns.

That might be true if AMD were buying Via. Intel is still #1 in x86, and so any additional x86 acquisition by Intel decreases competition.
What I'm wondering is if anything came of Via's 2019 announcement: did they eventually get around to making and selling any of those new server processors with AVX-512 running without throttling?

 

[Red34jfp]

That might be true if AMD were buying Via. Intel is still #1 in x86, and so any additional x86 acquisition by Intel decreases competition.

Does it still count as competition if they hold the 0.0% of the market?
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/325848-amd-x86-cpu-market-share-soars-hits-14-year-high

 

[SixTymes]

Interesting. that means they don't see any value in the technologies they hold, which, could be outdated.

 

[merikafyeah]

The people at Centaur have probably developed some interesting x86 designs in the 20 years they've been under VIA but most likely didn't have the capital needed to reach full potential. Intel has likely scoured their patents and discovered some promising new R&D material and therefore decided to nab the key employees. Gelsinger alone can't carry Intel, some new blood has to be brought in at some point. Perhaps 8 years in the future we'll see the fruits of the decision made today.

 

[gamerk2]

In an age where Via is irrelevant in the X86 market, I would doubt there would be any anti-trust concerns.
Also, in an age where X86 has very strong competition from ARM, it would not matter.

That's the logic that allows for unchecked corporate acquisitions eventually ending in a duopoly like we have in so many industries.