Intel Expands Investments to Include Wireless Upstarts
Monday December 4 8:05 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chipmaker Intel Corp. (NasdaqNM:INTC - news) said on Monday it is expanding its investments in upstart technology companies, even as most stock market investors are running the other way.
Intel said it will expand its investments in start-up technology businesses to include wireless technologies, bringing its Intel Communications Fund to $500 million from the $200 million set aside since the fund was formed a year ago.
To date, the fund has invested in companies developing products around two technical areas considered strategic to Intel. One is the Intel Internet Exchange Architecture, which is its design for networking equipment. The other is technology that combines voice and data communications onto one network, known as Computer Telephony Media.
``The third one we're adding now will be wireless,'' said Robert Manetta. ``We have been investing in wireless not only in the United States but also overseas. So now we're kind of formalizing that process by adding a wireless concentration to the fund and upping the amount of money we're going to be investing.''
Intel said it will invest the wireless funds in companies that develop products such as cell phones and wireless handheld devices around Intel's designs, specifically Intel's Personal Internet Client Architecture and Intel's XScale microarchitecture.
Intel already supplies flash memory chips, which retain their data when power is turned off and are used, for example, to store phone numbers in mobile phones.
``We've had a long legacy of supplying these parts into cell phones and we've been making acquisitions and doing some internal development to provide other building blocks for cell phones'' personal digital assistants, said Manetta.
The Intel Communications Fund is one part of overall investments made by Intel's investments arm, known as Intel Capital. Intel Capital last year made some $1.2 billion in investments in 250 companies.
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