The largest chipmaker in the Holy Land has reached an agreement to acquire the second largest chipmaker operating in the country – in a deal with an estimated value of $ 5.4 billion
Five years, minus a month after the announcement of the giant deal for the acquisition of Mobilai, Intel announces a plan to make another massive acquisition deal in Israel that managed to catch most of us unprepared – approximately $ 5.4 billion for Tower Semiconductor, the (relatively) old and relatively modest chipmaker from Migdal The valley.
Tower is not a huge company participating in the endless and high-budget race to develop the smallest and most crowded production lithographs, and has a not-so-simple history with management shocks and big losses – but in recent years has managed to find reasonable success with chip-specific applications on silicon-germanium substrates Huge investments incessantly in order to survive in the race.
It is estimated that Intel is interested in gaining business access to Tower’s various customers through this acquisition – with an improved chance of convincing them to also choose its other chip manufacturing services as an alternative to those of key competitors TSMC and Samsung, as part of IDM 2.0’s strategy to become the largest maker of Chips for third-party companies down the road.
Will this deal be a springboard for further expansions of the chip manufacturing infrastructure in Israel, from Intel itself and perhaps from other companies that may be interested in challenging it locally? We’ll see.