Intel stock pops 8% because someone apparently wants to buy the troubled chipmaker

Intel’s (
INTC
) stock was up by more than 8% during late-morning trading on Friday after a report said the faltering chipmaker is
being targeted for an acquisition
.

Tech newsletter SemiAccurate reported on Friday that it “was read an email about a company trying to acquire Intel, whole.” The email “took months to confirm,” SemiAccurate said, and indicated that the unnamed company aims to buy Intel’s whole business, not only parts.

“Our problem was that while we knew the email was real and it said directly that the company was interested acquiring Intel, we couldn’t determine if it was a plan of action or just a CEO tossing ideas out,” SemiAccurate said.

The embattled chip pioneer has seen its shares fall by around 54% in the past year. In December, Intel announced that its former chief executive Pat Gelsinger was
retiring and stepping down
from its board of directors.

Gelsinger’s departure came amid Intel’s struggle to compete with other chipmakers such as Nvidia (
NVDA
), which has seen an astronomical rise from the artificial intelligence boom.

Intel’s shares fell 27% in August after it
missed revenue expectations
for the second quarter and announced layoffs. The company missed profit expectations partly due to Intel’s decision to “more quickly ramp” its Core Ultra artificial intelligence CPUs, or core processing units, that can handle AI applications, Gelsinger said on the company’s earnings call.

In September, a report said chipmaker
Qualcomm was interested in buying
some of Intel’s chip design units. Intel has also worked with its longtime investment bankers at Morgan Stanley (
MS
) and Goldman Sachs (
GS
) on options to save its business, including by
splitting its foundry division, which designs and manufactures chips, cutting factory projects, and M&A
, according to Bloomberg. The company was reportedly also in talks with alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management (
APO
) for a
$5 billion investment
.

Meanwhile, Intel was awarded
up to $7.87 billion in direct funding
in November under the Chips Act. The funding will directly support Intel’s nearly $90 billion planned investment in the U.S. by the end of the decade — part a more than $100 billion expansion plan for fabrication and advanced packaging facilities in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon.

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