In a major collaboration that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago, Nvidia announced today that it was buying a total of $5 billion in Intel stock, giving Intel's competitor ownership of roughly 4 percent of the company. In addition to the investment, the two companies said that they would be co-developing "multiple generations of custom data center and PC products."
"The companies will focus on seamlessly connecting NVIDIA and Intel architectures using NVIDIA NVLink," reads Nvidia's press release, "integrating the strengths of NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing with Intel’s leading CPU technologies and x86 ecosystem to deliver cutting-edge solutions for customers."
Rather than combining the two companies' technologies, the data center chips will apparently be custom x86 chips that Intel builds to Nvidia's specifications. Nvidia will "integrate [the CPUs] into its AI infrastructure platforms and offer [them] to the market."
On the consumer side, Intel plans to build x86 SoCs that integrate both Intel CPUs and Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets—Intel's current products use graphics chiplets based on its own Arc products. More tightly integrated chips could make for smaller gaming laptops, and could give Nvidia a way to get into handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck or ROG Xbox Ally.
It takes a while to design, test, and mass-produce new processor designs, so it will likely be a couple of years before we see any of the fruits of this collaboration. But even the announcement highlights just how far the balance of power between the two companies has shifted in the last few years.
A dramatic reversal
Back in 2005, Intel considered buying Nvidia outright for “as much as $20 billion,” according to The New York Times. At the time, Nvidia was known almost exclusively for its GeForce consumer graphics chips, and Intel was nearing the launch of its Core and Core 2 chips, which would manage to win Apple’s business and set it up for a decade of near-total dominance in consumer PCs and servers.