Intel Reportedly Interested In Acquiring RISC-V Firm SiFive

Back in March during the announcement of Intel Foundry Services it was mentioned that SiFive and Intel were working together to allow RISC-V chips to be fabbed within Intel's facilities. Additionally, Intel Capital previously invested in SiFive during prior funding rounds. Now it turns out Intel is reportedly positioning to potentially acquire SiFive.

According to a Bloomberg report out today, Intel has made an offer to acquire SiFive for more than $2 billion USD. The report is unconfirmed and said to still be early on in talks as well as other firms being potentially interested in acquiring SiFive otherwise there is also investor interest if they just pursue a new round of funding instead.

While we don't normally cover acquisition rumors, it's quite interesting to see Intel tossing their weight behind this RISC-V start-up and quite interesting to think that this major RISC-V provider could end up being owned by Intel, given the interest by Phoronix readers in this open-source processor ISA.

SiFive's RISC-V IP is easily the most compelling out there at the moment and they have been working on making more developer inroads with efforts like the HiFive Unmatched.

SiFive was founded back in 2015 by researchers out of UC Berkeley. For now it's just waiting and seeing if this report pans out and if SiFive ends up being acquired by Intel.