Intel has agreed to a $9 billion deal to sell most of its memory business to South Korea's SK Hynix as it moves toward more diverse technologies while shedding a major Chinese factory at a time of deepening trade friction between Washington and Beijing.
Intel said it will keep its "Optane" business of more advanced memory products, which analysts say are mostly produced in the United States.
According to the plan confirmed by the companies on Tuesday, SK Hynix will acquire Intel's NAND memory chip and storage business, including a related manufacturing site in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian. SK Hynix said the companies expect to get required governmental approvals for the deal by late 2021.
The transaction, if completed, could reportedly make SK Hynix the world's second-largest provider of NAND flash memory chips behind Samsung Electronics, another South Korean chip giant.
Demand for flash memory has strengthened in recent months due to buying of personal computers and servers as the coronavirus pandemic forces millions to work from home.
Intel said it plans to invest proceeds from the transaction into advancing long-growth priorities, including technologies related to artificial intelligence and fifth-generation wireless networks.
"This transaction will allow us to further prioritize our investments in differentiated technology where we can play a bigger role in the success of our customers and deliver attractive returns to our stockholders," Bob Swan, Intel's CEO, said in a statement.
Review: Director Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice”
Decades before he hosted "The Apprentice," Donald Trump was … an apprentice.
His mentor: Roy Cohn, the ruthless attorney who was a prominent New York power broker in the '70s and '80s after famously serving as a top aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
The Trump-Cohn connection is well known. But in "The Apprentice," his provocative if not quite shocking, entertaining if not quite illuminating, impeccably acted and inherently controversial film, Ali Abbasi takes it farther.
It's this relationship, posits the Danish Iranian director, that essentially made a young real estate heir — inexperienced but wildly ambitious — into the man who would become the 45th U.S. president, smashing the norms of American politics along the way.
Speaking of unlikely paths: The mere route of "The Apprentice" to the big screen is fodder for its own movie.
Written by Gabriel Sherman and starring an ingeniously cast trio of Sebastian Stan as Trump, Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, the film failed to get picked up at Cannes in May. That was surely due at least in part to a cease and desist letter from Trump lawyers.
Trump's campaign spokesman called the movie "pure fiction" (the filmmakers call their script "fact-based"). One of the film's investors — Trump supporter Dan Snyder, former owner of the Washington Commanders — saw it and wanted out. It was only weeks ago that Briarcliff Entertainment announced it would open "The Apprentice" this Friday — less than four weeks before the U.S. election.
So, what kind of movie do we have here?
Contrary to some descriptions, Abbasi says his film isn't a biopic at all, but a look at a relationship — and at a system that's about winning at any cost.
He's also... Read More