Chipmaker Intel is planning to push further into the Internet of Things market after agreeing to take over rival Altera in a $16.7 billion (€15 billion) cash only deal.
Altera will operate as a business unit within Intel. The chipset manufacturer said it is planning to use Altera’s field programmable gate array technology to create new kinds of products within data centres and the Internet of Things. It added Altera will benefit from Intel’s integrated device manufacturing techniques.
The takeover follows rival Broadcom being bought by Singaporean rival Avagao last week in a deal worth $37 billion (€33.7 billion).
The Altera acquisition is expected to be completed within the next nine months and is subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. The acquisition will further boost Intel’s position as the world’s biggest semiconductor company. According to figures from Gartner, it had sales of $50.8 billion (€45.7 billion) last year.
Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, said: “Intel’s growth strategy is to expand our core assets into profitable, complementary market segments. With this acquisition, we will harness the power of Moore’s Law to make the next generation of solutions not just better, but able to do more.
“Whether to enable new growth in the network, large cloud data centres or IoT segments, our customers expect better performance at lower costs. This is the promise of Moore’s Law and it’s the innovation enabled by Intel and Altera joining forces. We look forward to working with the talented team at Altera to deliver this value to our customers and stockholders.”