Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#31

Post by Fricken » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 2:29 PM UTC

drcross wrote: post #5

krisroadruck wrote: post #2

Picking up Tesla's table scraps for $16B seems like a losing move.

The split was caused by Tesla pushing targets that Mobileye was not comfortable with. I don't think we know enough about the situation without a report from someone inside the company but it's a little extreme to call them Tesla's table scraps.

Autopilot is floundering in the absence of Mobileye. It will take Tesla a while before their much more expensive hardware suite with 8 cameras and a Px drive chip (just the chip is worth a few thousand dollars) can match the performance of Mobileye's EyeQ3 and single camera.

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#32

Post by skdotdan » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC

samfisher83 wrote: post #17

mtgx wrote: post #9

Intel has made acquisitions of almost $40 billion in the past couple of years. It will be interesting to see if they can make this money back as competition becomes more fierce in the PC and server markets because of AMD and Qualcomm.

They have 95%+ marketshare in server chips. They have an enormous manufacturing advantage. Even though they charge so much for their chips if they feel threatened by Ryzen they can just lower the price of their chips to Ryzen prices because they have a manufacturing advantage. It will just hurt their margins. 40-50% margins forever seem pretty absurd from a pure economics perspective.

But they missed mobile, and PC sales will go down (at some point). Also, ARM on the server?

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#33

Post by dvirsky » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #13

haroldship wrote: post #8

My wife has Mobileye in her car - it works quite well - warning you when you're too close to the car in front or when you're wandering out of your lane.

did it come with the car or is it aftermarket?

I got one with my car (a Hyundai) recently. Works rather well, although has some false positives once in a while, where it screams that I'm about to hit someone while there's no one near me. Just think about the scale and quality of the data they collect like that!

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#34

Post by inglor » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #6

$16B is a great price for Mobileye's team, but I am not sure it is the best move for Intel. But I guess Intel will try to sell package deals to car markers and thus use this to try to keep NVIDIA and ARM from locking up the in-car market. Thus it is a strategic move on Intel's part to fend off competitors rather than reflective of the intrinsic value of Mobileye. BTW what was Mobileye's revenue last year and profit m…

Worth mentioning their factories in Israel are side by side and they already work together on projects in Jerusalem. A lot of Mobileye workers are ex-intel and sometimes vice versa.

The companies are a lot more linked than it seems.

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#35

Post by jn1234 » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 2:52 PM UTC

skdotdan wrote: post #29

Intel has spent billions of dollars in M&A and in R+D and still has missed ARM Holdings, just acquired by Softbank last summer.

No way they could get that by regulators. There would be too many anti-trust concerns.

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#36

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:05 PM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #27

Yeah, they're old school. They've got all sorts of deep industry partnerships and various driver assist and safety products. What they don't have is a Level 4 autonomous driving OS. Nobody does, it doesn't exist yet. The whole 3 ring circus of chipmakers, OEM's, and various component suppliers that stand to benefit from Autonomous vehicles is held aloft by a single tentpole that doesn't actually exist yet. It's just…

With all the peaks and troughs of AI over the years, don't you think we may be due for another trough, that maybe the reason, to quote:

>the experts of yesteryear are almost certainly not the people who will build the autonomous OS of the future

is because it will be a very long time before we have anything like a Level 4 vehicle?

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#37

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:06 PM UTC

cylinder wrote: post #14

bhouston wrote: post #6

$16B is a great price for Mobileye's team, but I am not sure it is the best move for Intel. But I guess Intel will try to sell package deals to car markers and thus use this to try to keep NVIDIA and ARM from locking up the in-car market. Thus it is a strategic move on Intel's part to fend off competitors rather than reflective of the intrinsic value of Mobileye. BTW what was Mobileye's revenue last year and profit m…

They're buying a story for their stock. "our stock is our product" and all that.

[deleted]

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#38

Post by samfisher83 » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

skdotdan wrote: post #32

samfisher83 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 95%+ marketshare in server chips. They have an enormous manufacturing advantage. Even though they charge so much for their chips if they feel threatened by Ryzen they can just lower the price of their chips to Ryzen prices because they have a manufacturing advantage. It will just hurt their margins. 40-50% margins forever seem pretty absurd from a pure economics perspective.

But they missed mobile, and PC sales will go down (at some point). Also, ARM on the server?

They didn't miss mobile. Mobile makes poor margins at least for intel so they are not in it. PC sales are already down. Where they make a ton of their money is data centers.

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#39

Post by snovv_crash » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

skdotdan wrote: post #32

samfisher83 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 95%+ marketshare in server chips. They have an enormous manufacturing advantage. Even though they charge so much for their chips if they feel threatened by Ryzen they can just lower the price of their chips to Ryzen prices because they have a manufacturing advantage. It will just hurt their margins. 40-50% margins forever seem pretty absurd from a pure economics perspective.

But they missed mobile, and PC sales will go down (at some point). Also, ARM on the server?

Mobile chips is low margin, there is hardly any money in it anyway.

Re: Intel buying Mobileye for up to $16B to expand in self-driving tech

#40

Post by samfisher83 » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 3:22 PM UTC

aub3bhat wrote: post #7

bhouston wrote: post #6

$16B is a great price for Mobileye's team, but I am not sure it is the best move for Intel. But I guess Intel will try to sell package deals to car markers and thus use this to try to keep NVIDIA and ARM from locking up the in-car market. Thus it is a strategic move on Intel's part to fend off competitors rather than reflective of the intrinsic value of Mobileye. BTW what was Mobileye's revenue last year and profit m…

There is no such thing as intrinsic value. There is price and price ($16B) is determined by the market. Talking about PE and multiples is pointless for tech companies where synergies and rapid adoption/changes are common.

Worst case in a few years they can write down 16 billion or some amount and they can lower their taxes. Effectively the government will pay for part of the purchase.