Intel reportedly approached Apple, TSMC for investment before Nvidia deal

Intel has already secured $5 billion from Nvidia and $8.9 billion from Trump
TSMC and Apple have also been targeted for investments
Tim Cook would “love to see Intel come back”

Intel had apparently approached Apple and TSMC for an investment before it struck its recent mega deal with Nvidia, The Wall Street Journal has reported, making for a pretty interesting bid.

Intel, which recently secured a deal with the US government in return for a stake in the company, both relies on and competes with Taiwan’s TSMC, with many of its CPUs, GPUs and networking chips actually outsourced to TSMC.

However, with the foundry business failing to secure any major customers, the company has faced struggles in recent years.

Intel sought bids from rival companies

TSMC wasn’t the only company Intel had approached – Bloomberg noted the chipmaker has also engaged in conversations with Apple, which used to use Intel chips in Macs between 2005 and 2020 before shifting to Arm-based proprietary SoCs.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has already publicly noted: “We’d love to see Intel come back.”

In the end, Intel secured a $5 billion investment from Nvidia – more than half of the $8.9 billion US Government investment into the chipmaker – in a previously unsuspected move.

Intel previously had the market covered, leaving Nvidia to focus on gaming applications, but in mid-2020 Nvidia’s market cap passed Intel’s at the $250 billion mark. Today, Nvidia is worth $4.32 trillion, and Intel has dropped to just $158.7 billion.

Analysts now see further investments as critical for Intel’s success going forward. If the company scores a deal with the likes of Apple, it would mark growing confidence in Intel’s turnaround efforts under the new leadership of CEO Lip-Bu Tan, but failure to collect further signatures could damage the company’s growing momentum.

Only time will tell if Intel can turn itself around, but one thing’s for certain. With two consecutive quarters of zero growth after a period of decline, the company is in need of drastic action.