Intel is not done yet. The company’s plan to become a big player in the semiconductor business is even more ambitious than we thought. Today’s news arrives via the WSJ, “Intel Corp. has struck an unusual $30 billion funding partnership with Brookfield Asset Management Inc.” Both companies will finance and build a new factory in Chandler, Arizona. Apparently, this is the first of many similar deals for Intel. The company wants to build chip manufacturing capabilities fast and it’s using this co-investment as a way to raise money outside of the traditional banking system. For its part, Brookfield is a Canadian asset-management firm that has “more than $750 billion in assets under management.” If this goes well, these new pools of capital will allow Intel to build factories in other places. In this case, Intel will fund 51% of the new facility and thus have “a controlling stake in the financing vehicle that would own the new factories.” Brookfield will finance and own the rest, and both companies “will split the revenue that comes out of the factories.” The deal would be “the first of what could be a series of such arrangements Intel pursues to underpin Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger’s push to make the company a leading contract chip maker and regain its manufacturing advantage over competitors in Taiwan and South Korea.” What Does Intel ’s Chip Business Have To Do With Bitcoin? These chips are a crucial part of the Blockscale ASI...
