October 7, 2025

It is time for Intel to become private, former members of the board of directors say

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Despite years of troubled performances and failed strategies, the large icon of the semiconductor industry, Intel, has two major new shareholders which can give it a new hope of recovery: the American government, with a little less than 10%, and the most important design company in the world, Nvidia, with around 5% of ownership.

The next step is that the government is organizing Intel to become private.

Without the pressure of the delivery of quarterly profits for today’s shareholders, a private Intel could be divided into parts which no longer have an sense of being joint. A new company should focus on making fleas for all global companies in order to match or exceed performance levels that only TSMC can provide today. The other should commit to conceiving fleas. These are two distinct objective functions, markets and missions. In the end, Intel should also sell its control participation in the autonomous driving company, Mobileye, as well as the company’s venture capital branch. The strategic objective is to disintegrate the conglomerate which may have served in the past, but no longer meets the country’s need for an American foundry or offers the most value for shareholders.

It is understood that most conglomerates suffer from the said reduction in conglomerates. General Electric, once an icon of American industry, recognized that the rupture would make its constituent parts more precious and competitive in one of the most salient recent examples which demonstrate that the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole.

The Intel business model of vertical integration between design and manufacturing gave Intel a huge market power when it was the world leader in the two markets. It’s the past. Trying to recreate it, as some recent CEOs from Intel have done so, is condemned.

Here is the plan that seems right to us, certainly from the point of view of foreigners who left the board of directors of Intel some time ago.

Firstly, the government, with the support of a consortium of state-of-the-art design companies, should buy all of Intel’s public actions. The investment of $ 5 billion in Nvidia and the subsequent overvoltage of the Intel share price suggest that the capital markets would host such a decision. A combination of NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Google – the best and the largest product design companies of the planet – could easily afford it.

The creation of a successful foundry, taken from the Intel manufacturing assets and separated from design activities, would be a great victory for the Trump administration. It would be an even greater victory for large semiconductor design companies that depend in TSMC differently.

Second, the government and this consortium should find new owners for Intel design companies, including personal servers and computers. Our calculations behind the envelope suggest that Intel has left a lot of value locked behind its conglomerate structure. The foundry, for example, has an accounting value of around $ 70 billion, but is currently a huge loser of money. He needs $ 100 billion in new capital in the next decade to compete with TSMC. The other companies that could prosper by themselves include (1) a microprocessor design company for personal computers, worth around 100 billion dollars; (2) Design efforts for servers and data centers, also potentially worth $ 100 billion; (3) The autonomous, Mobileye driving company, worth around $ 15. billion; and (4) the vast venture capital portfolio, invested in private companies around the world.

Unlocking this value is extremely difficult for a public company submitting quarterly reports. Even in private, surgery is complicated operational. Presumably, the Board of Directors and the Management cannot see a way to follow. Only the company cannot collect funds to ensure that private enterprise. In itself, it would be difficult to obtain financial, technical and commercial assistance necessary to correspond to TSMC. Only the American government would be able to orchestrate the complex and extremely important disintegration of Intel with the necessary participation of large American design companies.

Third, by becoming private, Intel can attract the best and most brilliant talents. With the competitors of Intel flying at the top of the IA promise, Intel suffers from a massive brain session. While it releases thousands of employees, the best inevitably bail out. The existing public society cannot compete effectively for talents and without talent, it is unlikely to succeed in matching the TSMC in manufacturing or making its other units more competitive. Private companies can offer very attractive remuneration packages with the promise of a big day when companies return in public.

The result is that the whole restructuring could be accomplished in about a year. It was about as long as the rupture of AT&T took in the 1980s. By 2028, the segments could be sold at beautiful or public prices with significant yields to private shareholders. Taxpayers could earn hundreds of billions of dollars. Not only that, in terms of job creation and national security, the value would be immeasurable.

Opponents will argue that this strategy is not necessary. Intel could do everything before, and it can redo everything. But hope is not a strategy, and the world around Intel is not standing motion. Opponents can also say that Intel should be bought by one of its competitors. Allow Broadcom, for example, to buy Intel and repair it, as it has done with many other semiconductor companies. But in today’s environment, an acquisition like this would not fly: China, where Intel sells more than 25% of its products, would never approve it.

Currently, the American government and Nvidia have a problem. By taking charge of the situation, they can create a great opportunity to do good to the taxpayer. More importantly, Intel’s breakup will greatly help give the United States the semiconductor ecosystem that underpins all happy scenarios for software breakthroughs that benefit the American people and the world.

The opinions expressed in the Fortune.com comments are only the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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