The chipmaker Intel has been shedding assets to raise cash for its turnaround, and its programmable-chip subsidiary is next in line. Altera is preparing to file confidentially for an initial public offering in the coming weeks, with a raise that could exceed $2 billion and a listing possible this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Altera makes field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, the chips that can be reconfigured after they leave the factory. Intel spun the business out in 2025 and brought in Silver Lake as an investor, a deal that valued Altera at close to $9 billion and gave the private equity firm a majority stake.
The Silver Lake transaction was announced in April 2025 and valued Altera at $8.75 billion, with the private equity firm taking a 51 percent stake and Intel retaining the rest. Intel appointed Raghib Hussain, a veteran chip executive, to lead the standalone company. The structure gave Intel cash while leaving it a large minority interest, which is why selling a further slice in an IPO suits both owners: Silver Lake gets a path to exit, and Intel keeps exposure to an asset it still partly holds.
The IPO would mark another step in Intel’s effort to focus. The company has been divesting non-core assets to fund its foundry ambitions and shore up a balance sheet stretched by years of heavy capital spending. Selling a slice of Altera to public markets continues that program while keeping a stake.
The divestitures are part of a deeper repair job. Intel suspended its dividend in 2024 and, under chief executive Lip-Bu Tan, who took over in March 2025, has cut thousands of jobs and reorganized around its foundry and processor businesses. The company has a long record of offloading what it considers non-core: it sold its NAND memory business to SK Hynix for $9 billion in a deal completed in early 2025, and it has repeatedly trimmed its stake in the self-driving unit Mobileye. Altera is the latest asset moved toward the exit.
FPGAs occupy a niche but durable corner of the chip industry. They are used in networking equipment, aerospace and defense, industrial systems, and a growing set of data-center applications where reprogrammability matters more than raw speed. The category has consolidated around a few players, with AMD’s Xilinx unit the largest and Lattice Semiconductor a smaller rival.
The category has already consolidated once. AMD bought Xilinx, the FPGA leader, for about $35 billion in an all-stock deal that closed in February 2022, folding the business into its adaptive-computing division. Intel is now running the same logic in reverse: rather than buying a programmable-chip leader, it is selling one, a decade after its own acquisition of Altera. An independent Altera would join Lattice as another pure-play FPGA name in a market where programmable logic still commands premium margins.
Altera’s history is long by chip-industry standards. Intel acquired the company in 2015 for about $16.7 billion, folded it into its programmable solutions group, and then reversed course a decade later by splitting it off. The 2025 separation was part of a broader retreat from businesses that did not feed Intel’s core processor and foundry strategy.
The timing of the filing coincides with a market that has been receptive to semiconductor offerings. AI has lifted the entire chip sector, and even companies with little direct exposure to accelerators have seen investor demand. An FPGA maker riding the data-center buildout sits close enough to the AI story to benefit without depending on it entirely.
Recent listings give the bankers a reference point. Arm’s September 2023 IPO raised about $4.9 billion and was the largest of that year, a sign that investors would pay up for scarce semiconductor assets even before the AI rally peaked. Since then, chip and chip-adjacent offerings have drawn steady demand, and bankers say an FPGA business with data-center exposure would be pitched as a way to own AI infrastructure without buying an accelerator maker outright.
Data centers have become a second growth lane for the category. FPGAs already handle networking and storage acceleration inside hyperscaler fleets, and their ability to be reprogrammed for new workloads has drawn interest as AI systems change faster than fixed silicon can follow. That is the argument Altera will make to public investors: a chip that is slower than a GPU but far more flexible, at a moment when workloads refuse to sit still.
Analysts said the confidential filing allows Altera to test markets quietly and adjust timing. Confidential submissions have become the norm for technology companies, which can refine terms and wait for a favorable window without exposing details to competitors.
The overhang is Intel itself. A successful Altera IPO would validate the spinout and provide Intel with cash, but it would also invite scrutiny of why the parent is selling while its own stock has struggled. The deal’s structure will matter: how much Intel retains and how much Silver Lake sells will signal confidence in the asset.
The people cautioned that plans can change and the timing could slip. But the direction is set: Intel is turning its programmable-chip unit into a public company, and the FPGA market is about to gain another independent listed name.
