This is nothing more than Intel joining the ranks of the other tbtf government contractors. That's how they plan to survive.

Intel has had the government as a customer for a long time. They even have a division for it (Intel Federal)

Did they manufacture military designs though? Or just sell Intel designs (with some modifications) to military?

Intel was making 386 chips for the F-22 for a looking time after they became obsolete.

386 in the F22?! Why ? Such an old chip even considering the plane was in design for years no ?

I thought the F-22 initially used the i960, not the 386, but then switched to PowerPC.

[0] http://www.righto.com/2023/07/the-complex-history-of-intel-i...

It also increases the likelihood of a secure supply chain for mil components. Seems like a win-win.

In the sense that any voluntary trade is a win-win for both parties, yes. But it is inglorious compared to where Intel was in, say, the early 2000s. It is a big change to look at market cap and see traders treating AMD as a big player, then Intel somewhere off in the also-ran territory.

So much for their monopoly.

I did not know intel was so short of cash it needs military money to stay afloat.

They are not immediately short of actual cash per se, but they have been doing a lot of layoffs and pulling back on big ticket investments like the foundry they had planned in Germany, financial health is a top concern .

they are also loosing revenue hard in multiple segments including their core high margin enterprise server chips and also not gaining foothold in others (mobile/lower power device or GPUs)

They need fresh revenue really quickly to keep markets happy on share price which has really tanked this year, also to keep the supply chain healthy and talent motivated

Any foundary business is always in need of cash, a leading edge foundary is $20-$30B outlay minimum these days , not many companies in the world are so flush they can easily spend $30B without sweating it

Seems like that facility they were supposed to build in Germany is going to be built in Poland.

Their long term plan is to make money via foundry/fab orders, so it makes sense to see this. But otherwise their share price is currently rock bottom because they're pouring money into infrastructure development (plus late EUV adoption) and a lot of people are sceptical it'll pan out.

They're not short of cash, they're short of business throughput for their fab because it's uncompetitive next to TSMC, but a lot of their chip design business relies on integration with it so they'd lose a ton of money if they went fabless like AMD and switched to TSMC.

Intel is arguably on the cusp of death as the company that it was between, say, 2000-2013.

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/12/intel-is-on-li...

It’s pretty nuts reading The Atlantic’s piece from 10 years ago and then seeing where the company is now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/paul-...

losing Apple's desktop and laptop business ended up being quite a loss for them

Intel could't have done it profitably and chose to lose the business. Intel has been a cash cow business for a while, coasting on its early wins and doomed to be gradually surpassed. For shareholders seeking short and medium term value, this works out quite well.

It's not about the small time military money it's about the big ticket government bailout. If they have some hooks into the military then they have, what's the term, a "moral hazard" card to freely take risk, military dependency puts them at the top of the bailout list (which they kinda were already, now even moreso)

This is not a good sign, it only means that Intel will survive from government handouts. If I ware a shareholder I would look for an exit.

Wise