Intel Releases Ownership Of The SSD Business To SK Hynix Worth IDR 132 Trillion

Illustration (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - The technology giant Intel has just sold its Solid State Drive or SSD storage media business to a semiconductor company from South Korea, SK Hynix. The acquisition value is said to be worth US $ 9 billion or around Rp132 trillion.

This decision makes Intel completely out of the flash memory and storage business. Even though Intel still maintains Optane technology for its high-end product line.

Where the transaction agreement released by Intel with SK Hynix will include NAND SSD and its components and a factory located in Dalian, China.

"For Intel, this transaction allows us to prioritize further investment in different technologies where we can have a greater role in the success of our customers and provide attractive income for shareholders," said Intel CEO Bob Swan, as reported by The Verge, Wednesday, October 21.

Even so, this acquisition agreement did not happen immediately, the two companies, both Intel and SK Hynix, were still waiting for approval from their respective governments for the transaction. SK Hynix's acquisition of the Intel SSD business is likely to be completed by the end of 2021.

Until the license is issued, Intel will continue to produce NAND chips at its factory in Dalian, and will remain the owner of the intellectual property related to the NAND SSD chips. This step in selling the SSD business also marks the latest consolidation of Intel which has begun to focus on developing processor chips and the data center business.

Where a few months earlier, Intel had also sold the 5G modem business it was developing to Apple with an acquisition value of US $ 1 billion or equivalent to Rp.13 trillion.

SK Hynix itself is a company that focuses on manufacturing dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. Where this semiconductor company already has factories spread across Korea, the US, China and Taiwan.