Intel’s CEO on Classiq: “Intel will become a full stack revenue-generating quantum computing company”
Lip-Bu Tan explained the $2.3 billion deal to investors on Thursday. He did not mention the price or his own investment in the Israeli firm.
Three days after Intel agreed to buy Classiq, its CEO used the closing minutes of his prepared remarks on Thursday's earnings call to put the deal into the company's strategy. They were his first remarks to investors since the announcement on Monday.
"This week, we announced our intent to acquire Classiq, an Israel-based quantum software provider, moving our quantum efforts from foundational research towards commercialization," Tan said.
He described what Classiq brings. "Classiq's overarching hardware-agnostic software platform layer provides a gateway for more consumers to explore quantum computing," he said, "and it is a wonderful complement to our already strong internal quantum hardware and software stacks."
Then he gave the product ambition. The deal, Tan said, "enables us to further extend our compute platform offering to include QPUs in addition to CPUs, GPUs and ASICs." QPU stands for quantum processing unit.
His summary: "Post-acquisition, Intel will become a full-stack revenue-generating quantum computing company."
Tan opened the passage by saying Intel "cannot lose sight of what comes next." He listed quantum computing alongside silicon photonics, neuromorphic computing and advanced materials as "breakthrough technologies" in which Intel continues to invest. The quantum remarks came after he spent most of the call on a weaker outlook, a PC slowdown and the shutdown at Intel's Israeli fab.
The call gave no price, which CTech reported as $2.3 billion in cash and Intel stock. It gave no closing date, no quantum revenue figure and no timeline for the "revenue-generating" business. Tan did not mention that he is a personal investor in Classiq. Sources close to Classiq told CTech he recused himself from the negotiations.
In a September podcast interview, Tan said Intel had about 70 people working on quantum computing and that "the verdict is still out. It's still very early." Classiq has about 150 employees and annual revenue below $100 million. It is the larger and more commercial of the two operations. Its CEO, Nir Minerbi, told CTech that "both sides have something to prove, although the burden of proof lies more heavily on us."
