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Intel Confirms $15 Billion Mobileye Deal (axios.com)
Intel is paying $15.3 billion to acquire Israeli computer vision company Mobileye in an effort to boost the chipmaker's position in the autonomous car market. From a report on Axios: Intel is tapping its foreign cash, paying $63.54 per share in cash for the company and said it should be immediately a boost to its per-share earnings; it is expected to close late this year. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich's letter to employees, as well as a missive from Mobileye insist "that instead of Mobileye being integrated into Intel, Intel's Automated Driving Group will be integrated into Mobileye."
Bazinga!
INTC has been a really good stock for me. I bought in at 23. Great company.
Holy shit this bubble.
I have no real basis of comparison, but even assuming that all luxury car use this product, is it reasonable ?
Intel has a very poor record as a software company, and without integrating Mobileye, they understand that at least. Don't get me wrong, Intel has a lot of great software engineers who contribute to open source projects, just intel doesn't sell any software I want to buy. As for them pushing chips, if it's not the right chip it will fail just like their tablet and netbook push
I try to inject my perspective from Detroit/the auto industry where appropriate. Intel is pushing hard to get into automotive.
AMD is only 14 Billion
**Life is too short to be serious**
Recently I drove a rental car that was equipped with a mobileye vision unit below the rearview mirror and I was quite impressed with it. It was pretty accurate at seeing speed limit signs, even in construction zones. It also was very good at measuring following distances and alerted us when we were coming up on a car (or other obstacle) too fast. Saved us a couple of times in stop and go traffic. Shoulder checked to see if it was safe to change lanes and suddenly got a beep when someone hit the brakes in front of us. Also was fairly good at lane departure warnings.
So I can see how their technology as a driver assistance device is quite useful. Technology is coming along quite nicely. The only problem is that car makers are already putting all of this in their new cars, so the market for these units is small. At the same time, I don't see a lot of money to be made in autonomous cars just yet. Quite a gamble for Intel.
It's very interesting when you consider that Mobileye just sold for $15 billion and they make very little in physical terms, and sell even less. Yet Opel, which does actually make and sell real physical things, sold for $2 billion. Kind of throws cold water on Trump's idea that we can make America great/white again through returning to manufacturing. From an investor's point of view, the money is just not in manufacturing.
#bdsfail /giggles
I -am- awake, and your tinfoil hat is screwed on too tight.
If you /. complainers don't think both autonomous and HAD (highly-assisted driving) is going to be a gigantic market,you're not paying any attention. :-) .
I am paying attention, mostly 'cause I work for one of the companies making radar & camera products for these functions, and partly 'cause I like the neat things my Tesla can do
The fact is that there's going to be zillions of dollars' worth of contracts from car mfrs for sensors, processing algorithms, and control algorithms. Intel wants in on that.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Let's say the average full-time Engineer costs $150k/year (all in, including health care and benefits). For $15B, Intel could have employed 10,000 such Engineers for a whole decade for the amount of money they spent on this questionable acquisition. Now you know what the cost of not spending on R&D is.
I doubt Intel is buying them because of what they have shipped so far, it's probably their pipeline that Intel wants.
"However, greed makes people blind to reality." so does jealousy.