There probably could not have been a better time for Tal Saiag and Asaf Ezra, the entrepreneurs behind Israeli cloud optimization solutions company Granulate. In 2002, they sold the company to Intel for $650 million, after raising just $45 million. In the same month the US Federal reserve hiked the interest rate for the first time in years and several months later the tech bubble burst and the value of privately held tech companies plummeted.
Intel's circumstances also underwent an extreme change. In the previous few years the chip giant had been a growing company thanks to the Covid pandemic that had boosted laptop sales. Today Intel is a company caught in a cash crisis. In order to raise capital it must realize every asset that is not in its core business. It has mulled the sale of Mobileye and Altera, and for several months it has been looking to realize the assets of Israeli company Granulate, which currently employs 100 people.
In addition to the founders Ezra and Saiag, among the funds that profited handsomely from the sale were Insight Partners, Hetz, TLV Capital and Red Dot.
Industry sources believe that, as for each of Intel's subsidiaries, all options are on the table: from closing Granulate, through cutting the number of employees, to selling it as it is to a software company.
Two years ago Intel was considering entering the cloud enterprise products market but due to its cash flow crisis and the new focus on developing chip production, it abandoned the idea. Unlike Mobileye, Granulate was integrated into Intel.
No response has been forthcoming from Intel.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 27, 2024.
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