In 2005, Intel CEO Paul Otellini surprised the company's board. According to a report from the New York Times, he suggested that Intel buy Nvidia for "as much as" $20 billion.
According to the Times's sources ("two people familiar with the boardroom discussion"), even some Intel executives thought that Nvidia's designs could eventually play an important role in data centers. While that idea would come to fruition with the modern AI boom, the board pushed back against it. It would have been Intel's most expensive acquisition, and there were worries about integrating the company. Otellini backed off, and that was that.
Instead, Intel's board backed an internal graphics project, Larabee, which now-CEO Pat Gelsinger helmed. It used Intel's x86 technologies, and the GPU was a sort of hybrid of a CPU and GPU. Intel ultimately pulled the plug on the project, though it would later return to graphics with its Xe and Arc projects.
On the AI side, Intel has made a handful of purchases, including Nervana Systems and Movidius in 2016 and Habana Labs in 2019. But none held a candle to where Nvidia is today—a juggernaut with a market cap of over $3 trillion. Intel's Gaudi 3 AI chip is positioned as a cheaper alternative to Nvidia's offerings, but the company is primarily thought to have missed the boat on AI.
With its other struggles in manufacturing and building customers for its foundry business, Intel is now a much smaller company than Nvidia at under $100 billion. Intel is working on NPUs for consumer technology, including laptops and now its desktop CPUs.
This isn't the only time Intel gave up on getting into AI early. In 2017 and 2018, Intel had the opportunity to buy a stake in OpenAI when it was still a tiny non-profit research firm. But then-CEO Bob Swan put the kibosh on that deal, assuming that AI models were far from reaching a broad market.
