Intel isn’t going to dry up and blow away
But what the heck happened?
Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Written just for you!
📈 Trending Up: Eagles … democrats and crypto? … India … European spinal rigidity … Vietnam replacing Chinese manufacturing … Jony Ive … going public … fair source?
📉 Trending Down: Credit card interest rates? … interest rates in China (BG) … European economic activity … Indian growth (BG) … Twitter’s UK, US userbase … Private equity’s reputation in the open-source world …
🔋Nuclear momentum? I’m sure TechCrunch’s Tim De Chant will have the capstone piece on this in time, but news that banks are lining up financing for nuclear projects to help hit climate goals meshes neatly with news that Microsoft is helping to reopen an American nuclear power facility, so that it can pour that juice into its data centers.
Oh, and Amazon is hiring nuclear engineers.
Hell yeah, let’s split some more goddamned atoms.
Economic Calendar
Earnings: Progress Software and Stitch Fix on Tuesday, Micron Wednesdsay, Accenture Thursday
Economic Data:
Monday: S&P flash consumer and manufacturing PMI (Also, Indian, German, French, and EU manufacturing PMI).
Tuesday: Consumer confidence (Also, rate decision in Australia, South Korean consumer confidence).
Wednesday: New home sales (Also, mid-month inflation data from Brazil).
Thursday: Initial jobless claims, durable goods, pending home sales (Also, Italian business confidence, Canadian manufacturing sales, Japanese inflation data).
Friday: Personal spending, income, PCE inflation data, including month/month, year/year, core (Also, French and German inflation, EU consumer confidence, Mexico trade balance Canadian GDP).
What happened to Intel?
It’s time to break out an old Hemingway chestnut:
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
Enter, Intel. I presume you are aware Intel has not had the best run of years lately. The company managed to pull a Microsoft and miss mobile, watched Nvidia become god-king of the AI boom, Qualcomm is worth twice as much today, and the company’s expansion into manufacturing for others has failed to shake up its fortunes.
It’s a mess.
But gradually, and then suddenly. What changed recently at Intel that led to Qualcomm floating an acquisition and my former corporate overlords Apollo offering $5 billion in “equity-like” capital?