Intel announced that it acquired Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion or $53 per share in cash. The company’s CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement, “Tower’s portfolio of specialized technologies, geographic reach, deep customer relationships and service-oriented operations will help evolve Intel’s foundry services and advance our goal of becoming a leading provider of global foundry capabilities.”
Tower, which produces various types of chips for customers in all industries, including automakers and medical and industrial equipment manufacturers. Its website shows that it has seven manufacturing facilities located in Israel, Italy, the United States and Japan, making 6‑inch, 8‑inch and 12-inch chips. Tom’s Hardware says the manufacturing processes it uses are not state-of-the-art, but the chips it makes don’t need the latest technology anyway. Tower only needs to reliably and consistently generate large volumes of chips.
Before Tower, Intel was reportedly in talks to buy the much larger chipmaker and AMD spin-off GlobalFoundries for about $30 billion. However, it was not successful and GlobalFoundries chose to pursue an initial public offering instead.
Intel launched its foundry services in 2021 when it committed $20 billion to build two plants in Arizona and explained that it would be run as its own business unit. Earlier this year, the company also revealed plans to build a massive semiconductor plant in Ohio that it hopes will become “the largest silicon manufacturing site on the planet.” It will use the plants in the complex to manufacture both its chips and chips for customers as part of its foundry services.
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