Nvidia invests $5 billion in Intel, new SoC partnership announced

Intel is about to go through another major change, as Nvidia has just bought up $5 billion worth of stock. With the investment in hand, Intel will also embark on a new joint-development effort with Nvidia to create multiple generations of custom datacenter and PC products.

The two companies will focus on integrating Nvidia GPU and Intel CPU architectures using NVLink. The end goal will be devices that leverage the strengths of Nvidia's AI accelerated GPU computing with Intel's leading CPU technologies and x86 ecosystem. This will include custom Nvidia x86 CPUs destined to power AI infrastructure. On the PC side of things, Intel will offer x86 SoCs with integrated Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets.

As for Nvidia's massive investment in Intel, the company will acquire $5 billion worth of common stock at a price of $23.28 per share. Speaking on the move, Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang said: “This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel’s CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem — a fusion of two world-class platforms. Together, we will expand our ecosystems and lay the foundation for the next era of computing.”

Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel, said: “We appreciate the confidence Jensen and the NVIDIA team have placed in us with their investment and look forward to the work ahead as we innovate for customers and grow our business.”

There will be a press conference later tonight where both CEOs will answer various questions about the deal, so a few more details should surface this week.

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KitGuru Says: This could be particularly interesting for the handheld PC market. Currently, AMD Ryzen Z-series chips power most of the gaming handhelds, with just a few Intel options. An Intel SoC with RTX graphics could change that very quickly.

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