SiFive have apparently been shopping themselves around for a while. But they've been around for a long time, taken loads of investment, had a huge number of employees at one point (not now), and don't have very competitive products. My speculation is they're just not a very attractive acquisition with a complex ownership structure, and are demanding too much money to compensate their earlier investors.
A perfect target for Intel then, followed by a rapid exodus of the employees and destruction of the IP (like every other Intel acquisition).
They almost got bought by Intel, but then even Intel noped out.
Does anyone know or have they leaked potential cost of acquisition?
The $2B deal with Intel fell through. Thought they were arguably worth more on paper then. My guess is that they're in a weird place where a fair offer at the moment is less than the investment they've gotten so far.
Note that the $2 billion deal story was always "according to people with knowledge of the matter", and I wonder if it was nothing more than Intel taking a peek at Sifive's technology and books.
Might be worth more than Qualcomm is willing to spend and/or introduce antitrust concerns. This feels like a hedging of bets, no need for Qualcomm to buy the biggest name in the RISC-V space.
SiFive have had a very long time to create competitive CPUs and they haven't really managed it. I dunno what's going on there but I'm not sure I'd buy them either.
Their P870-D looks plenty competitive.
What they might have issues with is finding clients to license it to.