Silver Lake rumoured to be buying 20 per cent of AMD

September 9, 2015 | 12:21

Tags: #acquisition #directx #directx-12 #financial #lay-offs #lisa-su #radeon #silver-lake #zen

Companies: #amd #dell

AMD is rumoured to be selling a whopping 20 per cent stake to investment group Silver Lake, as the company looks to get a cash infusion big enough to last it through to the launch of its next-generation products.

AMD has been struggling for years now, having followed rival Intel down the long-pipeline path and lost its briefly-held performance advantage in the x86 processor arena. Coupled with a shrinking market share for its dedicated GPU products and a near-total absence from the burgeoning mobile market, it's fair to say the company's losses can't continue if it is to have a chance of survival. Although AMD has been talking up its next-generation Zen processor architecture and its Radeon graphics products have shown early architecture advantages in Microsoft's new DirectX 12 API, the company needs something to change sooner rather than later.

That change may come in the form of a cash investment from Silver Lake, the group most recently known for taking box-shifter Dell private. Unnamed sources speaking to Fudzilla, an outlet whose coverage should always be taken with a pinch of salt, has claimed that Silver Lake is to acquire 20 per cent of AMD in exchange for an undisclosed cash injection - cash AMD can use to keep the wolves from the door as it looks to get next-generation parts into market and gain back some of the market share it has been losing to Intel and Nvidia.

The claims are very much unproven at present, however. Neither Silver Lake nor AMD have responded to requests for comment, nor has AMD commented on Fudzilla's sources' claims that the investment cash will be stretched further with another round of lay-offs for the company's shrinking workforce.
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