Intel Sells Majority Stake In FPGA Subsidiary Altera Becomes an Independent Company - Silver Lake Acquires 51 Percent

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After months of rumors and negotiations, it is now official: Intel is giving up its majority stake in its FPGA division Altera. The investment company Silver Lake is acquiring 51 percent of the shares in the company, which is valued at 8.75 billion US dollars according to the transaction.

After months of negotiations, it is now a done deal: Intel has announced that it will sell 51 percent of its FPGA subsidiary Altera to the investment company Silver Lake. The deal values the FPGA specialist at 8.75 billion US dollars, meaning Intel will receive around 4.46 billion US dollars for the sale of its shares. Altera is to operate independently again in future and thus continue as an independent company under the majority ownership of Silver Lake. Intel, which will retain the remaining shares in the FPGA manufacturer, will from now on focus more on its core business.

Altera thus effectively becomes the largest pure-play provider of FPGA solutions. The company has an established architecture and toolchain for programmable logic devices. The focus is on the development of scalable solutions for high-growth markets, particularly applications in the fields of artificial intelligence, edge computing and robotics. However, AMD continues to hold the largest share of the global programmable logic market in this segment since the company acquired industry leader Xilinx in 2022.

Effective May 5, 2025, Raghib Hussain will assume the role of CEO of Altera. He was most recently President of Products and Technologies at Marvell and brings extensive experience from senior positions in the semiconductor industry, including at Cavium, Cisco and Cadence. The new structure is intended to accelerate product development and expand the market position in future-relevant segments, according to a press statement from Intel. Hussain replaces Sandra Rivera, who led Altera as CEO after the spin-off from Intel.

New start under old name

Intel acquired Altera in June 2016 for 16.7 billion US dollars. The company was founded in June 1983 and has been active in the field of programmable logic since its early days. After the acquisition by Intel, the company was managed within the group as the Programmable Solutions Group.

However, the integration of the company into the existing Intel structure was a problem. Reports of new developments to the existing Altera portfolio were rare. Instead, in 2019 Intel attempted to combine the internal Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) with its Network Infrastructure Division, which was to focus jointly on the fields of 5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning. However, this integration did not seem to be successful either; the Intel PSG remained, while there was now a "Network & Custom Logic Group" internally at Intel. It was as if the topic of FPGA remained a foreign body internally at Intel.

Nevertheless, it came as something of a surprise when Intel decided to spin off the Programmable Solutions Group as an independent company in October 2023, after the competing companies Xilinx had been taken over by AMD and Microsemi by Microchip in previous years. In March 2024, the company was then renamed back to its old, traditional name Altera. At this point at the latest, industry insiders suspected that Intel was possibly looking for a buyer after the integration of the company had gone rather unhappily. In November 2024, it was first reported that Silver Lake was considered a potential buyer for a majority stake in Altera.

Altera will now return to the market as an independent company, in which Intel will still hold a 49% stake. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2025. Intel plans to deconsolidate Altera from its own balance sheet after the closing. (sg)