Intel Said To Be Shopping $1B VC Portfolio

Intel is looking to sell off at least part of its venture capital unit in a deal that could be worth as much as $1 billion, reported Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the company’s intentions.

The tech giant is working with UBS Group AG in an effort to link up with potential suitors for the portfolio, which is global in scope which exists as part of the overall corporate venture unit known as Intel Capital.

That unit, said the newswire, has been restructured as of January of this year in the wake of the retirement of the former president, Arvind Sodhani, and the reconfiguration has been focused on bringing investment decisions to be more unified across the firm, the company said.

The movement toward a sale and how it may be actually be pursued remain in the early stages, sources told Bloomberg. The possibilities stretch across asset sales in whole or in part, with the potential to be divided, say, by geography or other classification, and the sale could pique the interest of secondaries firms, which are among the enterprises that buy investment portfolios.

At present, cumulatively, over the past 25 years, Intel Capital has invested roughly $11.6 billion across more than 1,440 companies and across 57 countries. The sectors tend to weight toward technology, with holdings centered in security, digital media and wearable tech, said Bloomberg. In the past year, $514 million was invested by Intel Capital across 143 companies, and investment activity was nearly split on a percentage basis between moving funding into new ventures and carrying investments to added rounds of activity where the capital unit had previously directed its efforts and deployed capital, in what are known as follow-ons.