On May 14, TapTechNews reported that Intel is close to reaching a financing agreement with asset management company Apollo. Intel's Irish wafer factory is expected to receive $11 billion (approximately 79.64 billion RMB) in construction funds.
Sources revealed that Intel and Apollo are in exclusive negotiations, and if everything goes smoothly, the two parties are expected to formalize the deal within the next few weeks.
Ireland is the location of Intel's first EUV lithography production wafer factory, Fab34, and is an important off-shore production base for Intel.
In January, Bloomberg reported that Intel planned to raise $2 billion to expand the Fab34 factory, a far cry from the $11 billion mentioned in yesterday's report by The Wall Street Journal. It appears that Intel is considering further expanding the construction scale of the Irish project.
In fact, Apollo is not the only asset management company in contact with Intel regarding financing for the Irish project. According to another Bloomberg report at the end of April, companies competing for the financing contract also include KKR and Stonepeak.
The three companies originally planned to form a joint venture to make a joint investment, but recently Apollo reached a consensus with Intel to invest separately.
Apollo's investment plan for Intel's Irish wafer factory is expected to follow Brookfield's precedent: Brookfield reached an agreement with Intel in 2022, exchanging $15 billion for a 49% stake in the Arizona wafer factory project.
The funds raised by Apollo will help Intel upgrade its off-shore production capacity to meet the needs of internal and external customers for larger wafer manufacturing scale and more advanced processes.