Thanks to our amazing community. Members like. You We've reached the top 15 of Spotify's video podcast, the top 10 audio podcasts on both. Apple and Spotify for the tech. Category. So you. All make this possible. If you want to support us more, check out our Patreon. That's patreon.com/stage. 0 news so we can keep this. Free and open for you to enjoy. Something interesting happened the other day. I was looking through our stats on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
And I noticed that about 50. 5% of you are not subscribed to the show that means. 45. Percent of you are subscribed, and I really do. Appreciate your support, but the other 50. 5% of you are awesome, but I'm going to ask you for a favor. Could you? Please hit. The subscribe button, it'll take you one second. I'm going to promise you 10 years of this podcast for free, no pay. Walls. I'm not going to charge you anything ever, but I'm going to give you 10 years of this show
for free. I've already been doing it for five years and I plan on doing it for 10 more. And the only way that we can continue doing this is? With your support. So one second of your time to hit the subscribe button right now. Would help the show. Tremendously. Thank you so much. Lip Bhutan is the CEO of Intel. He's also the chairman of an AI chip startup called Revos. This summer, he pitched Intel's board on buying that startup. The board said no, I didn't expect that.
They told him he had a conflict of interest because he was representing both sides of the deal. Then Meta swooped in, a bidding war broke out, and Revos ended up selling for roughly double its earlier valuation. Ted's venture capital firm Walden Catalyst posted a congratulations message about the successful outcome it delivered to its investors. So is this a story about Aceo using his company to enrich himself? Or is this the messy reality of hiring a well connected deal
maker to rescue a sinking ship? This is one of at least three instances where Intel has pursued deals that benefit 10 financially. According to people familiar with the matter. Intel brought him in specifically because of its investment network. The same network that now creates conflicts going to walk through the Revos bidding war, a second struggling startup called Samba Nova where 10 also has ties, and the new policies Intel has put in place to manage these situations.
We'll get right back into that after this break now. Intel hired Lip Bhutan in March to turn around a company that lost $19 billion last year. The board chose him because he spent decades as a venture capitalist with stakes in hundreds of chip and technology companies. That web of relationships has already delivered results. Tan helps clinch a $5 billion investment from NVIDIA and a $2 billion investment from SoftBank. And Intel stock has roughly doubled since his appointment.
So here's the key point, though. Those same relationships create a structural problem. Tan sits on both sides of the potential deals. He owns stakes in companies that Intel might want to buy or invest in. And Intel's board knew this when they hired him. They accepted that trade off. A spokesperson told Reuters that the board believes Intel should fully leverage his vast network to capture the new wave of industry opportunity.
Now inside this Revos situation. Tan is the chairman of Revos, a start up building EI chips based on an open source design called Risk V that's an alternative to the proprietary chip architectures from companies like ARM and Intel. Tan's venture firm, Walden Catalyst, is an investor. When he pitched Intel on buying Revos over the summer, the board rejected the proposal. They told him he had a conflict and that he lacked an EI strategy to justify the
acquisition. Tan then asked one of his lieutenants to pitch a new AI plan internally. That led to partnership talks between Intel and Revos. But Meta had been circling the start up for a while, and it made an offer. Intel responded with its own bid. Meta countered with a sweetened package. The competition pushed the deal value to around $4 billion, roughly double the $2 billion valuation Revos had been seeking an earlier fundraising. Now, Meta announced the acquisition in September.
The bidding war increased the payout for Riva shareholders, including Tan. OK, keep going here. Reuters could not determine exactly how much Tan profited because of financials or private, but his venture firm publicly celebrated the outcome. That blog post matters because it shows the firm taking credit for a win that came partly from Intel's participation in the bidding process. Now there's a second start up in the story, too.
Salma Nova is an AI computing company that Tan has backed since 2018 through his venture firm Walden International. No relation to me, my name is Will Walden. He became executive chairman in 2024 after the company struggled to compete against NVIDIA. Salma Nova raised money at a $5 billion valuation in 2021, but the business did not grow as expected. Customers preferred Nvidia's chips, which work across a wider range of AI applications.
Samba Nova laid off about 15% of its staff earlier this year. Now Tan pitched Intel on buying Samba Nova the summer, according to three people familiar with the talks, and the logic was that the acquisition could provide technology and talent to help Intel enter the AI chip market. Deal talks are ongoing, and Intel and Samba Nova have signed a non binding term sheet. That means the company Tan chairs might buy a company that Tan holds a leadership role in a
financial stake. So what do we know right now? Intel has put policies in place to manage these conflicts. Tent cannot attend or vote in board meetings or investment committee meetings when he has a personal interest in the outcome. And if he recuses himself from a decision at Intel Capital, the investment arm authority goes to the chief financial officer, David Zinsner.
That structure is supposed to create separation, but Zinsner reports directly to Tan, which limits how much independence the arrangement actually provides. Now hold out of this. Tan took different direct control of Intel Capital shortly after becoming CEO. He reversed an earlier plan to spin off the investment unit. He reorganized it so that it reports directly to him in the investment committee now consists of just two people, Tan and Zinsner, the executive who
works for him. And since then, Intel Capital has invested in several companies where Tan already has a stake through his personal investment vehicles. One example is Protein Techs, which announced a late stage funding run in September. Intel Capital increases existing position in the startup, which also counts Tan's firms as
investors. Some Intel employees have reportedly felt pressure to pursue deals in Tan's portfolio to win his support, and two corporate governance experts consulted said this arrangement raises red flags numerous and the conflicts are inherent in forging deals with their own portfolio companies. One of those experts also acknowledged the upside. You don't want to block good investments just because your CEO is well connected.
But the experts said Tan should have dropped his portfolio investments, place them in a blind trust or set up a special committee of the board to evaluate deals where he was a stakeholder. The Intel did not say whether Tan had taken any of those steps. Now here's where this goes. The Trump administration took a 9.9% stake in Intel this summer through a $8.9 billion investment. That deal effectively made American taxpayers shareholders in the company.
The investment came from CHIPS Act funding and the Department of Defense's Secure Enclave program. Intel is the only U.S. company capable of manufacturing advanced chips on American soil, and the government wants to keep it that way. The government's stake is passive, no board seat. They don't have any governance rights. But it adds another layer to the
stakes here. If Intel's CEO is pursuing deals that benefit his personal portfolio, the public has a financial interest and whether that behavior is appropriate. And Tan does not see his deal making as conflicted, according to people familiar with this thinking. He believes his positions at these startups and at Intel make him uniquely able to negotiate transactions that benefit all
parties. Intel's spokesperson said the company has an unwavering commitment to the highest standards of corporate governance, integrity and accountability. This is a messy situation without a clean answer. Intel needed someone with deep history relationships to rescue the company. They hired A venture capitalist with stakes and hundreds of firms. Now they're navigating the predictable conflicts that come with that choice. Canada has delivered results. The stock is up.
The NVIDIA and SoftBank investments are real, but so are the questions about whether Intel's board can adequately supervise the CEO who controls the investment arm and whose portfolio companies keep showing up in Intel deal flow. The regulations require disclosure of related party transactions, but Intel's next filing is not due until spring of 2026. Until then, shareholders and taxpayers are left trusting that the policies Intel put in place are enough. Hey, thank you so much for
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