According to the story, VIA technologies, makers of the VIA Nano and C7 processor among other things, has plans to sell as much as 300 million new shares of stock at around $0.30/share in the coming weeks. What is perhaps more interesting, is that NVIDIA is apparently in talks with VIA to buy up the majority of those new shares. While neither side is confirming anything about the deal today, it just makes sense. NVIDIA is in need of a way to be on level ground with Intel and AMD, both of which have, or will have, high performance CPUs and GPUs sometime in 2010. As the lone company still traveling solo with just GeForce under its belt, an acquisition or merger with VIA would at least POTENTIALLY give them an x86 license and a decent CPU product to enter into the total platform market.
We don’t know what percentage of the company NVIDIA would own IF it did buy all 300 million shares of new stock, but regardless of the ratio, if it happens, it would cement to the industry NVIDIA’s plans to take on Intel in all product categories.
VIA Technologies plans to sell 300 million new shares at a price ranging from NT$9-12 (US$0.27-0.35) per share through private placement, the company has announced. Nvidia is reportedly in talks with VIA to take up a portion of the new shares, according to market sources.
VIA commented that possible candidates for the private placement will be made clear after a shareholder meeting scheduled on June 19. Nvidia declined to comment market speculation.
