Intel buys Israeli cloud optimization co Granulate

Granulate founders Tal Saiag and Asaf Ezra

Israeli commuters impose 45 minute limit

Intel has not disclosed financial details of the deal, but the price is estimated at some $650 million.

Despite several unsuccessful attempts in the past, semiconductor giant Intel is not giving up on software. Today, the company announced the acquisition of Israeli startup Granulate Cloud Solutions. Granulate will become part of Intel's Software and Advanced Technology Group, which was set up last year. Intel has not disclosed financial details of the acquisition, but the price is estimated at some $650 million. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of this year.

Granulate was founded in 2018 by Asaf Ezra (CEO) and Tal Saiag (CTO), who served together in the IDF's Talpiot technology program and in intelligence unit 8200. The company develops software that helps companies to reduce their cloud computing costs through optimization of computing resource use, without having to rewrite code.

"Together with Intel, we believe we can help customers achieve meaningful cost reductions and five times the throughput across workloads," Ezra said. "As a part of Intel, Granulate will be able to deliver autonomous optimization capabilities to even more customers globally and rapidly expand its offering with the help of Intel’s 19,000 software engineers."

Last December, Granulate was chosen as one of "Globes'" most promising startups. It has raised $50 million from investors such as Red Dot Capital Partners, Insight Partners, TLV Partners, and Hetz Ventures. It employs about 125 people, who will benefit from the deal, with $100 million of the acquisition price allocated to them.

Granulate will remain a single unit within the Software and Advanced Technology Group, which could enable it to be spun off in the future, as Intel is currently doing with another Israeli company that it acquired, Mobileye, which is being floated on the stock market.

Greg Lavender, chief technology officer, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Advanced Technology Group at Intel, said: "We are building our portfolio of software optimization tools that offer flexible and scalable capabilities that allow us to meet the growing demand of the ubiquitous compute era. 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."

Intel and Granulate’s relationship began in late 2019, when Granulate was part of the first graduating class of startup accelerator program Intel Ignite. Over the past year, Intel and Granulate have worked together under a commercial agreement to collaborate on workload optimization on Xeon deployments. "This collaboration resulted in gains in performance and decreases in costs for customers running on Intel processors. With the acquisition of Granulate, Intel will rapidly scale Granulate’s optimization software, including across Intel’s data center portfolio," Intel said in its announcement.