Intel to buy cloud service startup Granulate in deal pegged at $650M

Intel Corp. on Thursday said it has agreed to acquire Israeli startup Granulate Cloud Solutions Ltd. in a deal reported to be worth about $650 million.

The companies didn’t disclose the price but Haaretz reported in Israel last week that it would be $650 million. TechCrunch also reported that figure on Thursday.

Tel Aviv-based Granulate helps companies optimize the performance of servers they rent from cloud service providers. It was founded in 2018 and had raised only about $46 million in funding, according to PitchBook Data. Its investors include Insight Partners, Fort Ross Ventures and Red Dot Capital Partners.

Granulate was in the first batch of companies to go through Santa Clara, California-based Intel’s Ignite startup accelerator program in 2019. Intel said it has been working with Granulate over the past year to optimize workloads on its Xeon processors. When the deal is done, Intel said it plans to rapidly scale Granulate’s optimization software across its data center portfolio.

“Granulate’s innovative approach to real-time optimization software complements Intel’s existing capabilities by helping customers realize performance gains, cloud cost reductions and continual workload learning,” Greg Lavender, general manager of the software and advanced technology group at Intel, said in Thursday’s announcement.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter. When that happens, Intel plans to add Granulate’s approximately 120 employees into its data center and AI business unit.

Intel is one of Arizona’s largest employers, with more than 12,000 employees at its Ocotillo Campus in Chandler.

The company’s stock was down by about $3.64% at the close of trading Thursday. It has dropped by nearly 5% (Nasdaq:INTC) so far in 2021 at a time that the Nasdaq composite index has dropped by about 9%. Track the stock here.