Intel Outspends Rivals In R&D: 28% More Than Nvidia, 156% More Than AMD
- Reference: 0179010294
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/04/2152214/intel-outspends-rivals-in-rd-28-more-than-nvidia-156-more-than-amd
- Source link:
> An analysis of research and development expenditure by TechInsights was reported by [2]Korea JoongAng Daily , but you can get the numbers yourself by pulling up each company's 2024 financial results. For example, AMD declared that it spent $6.456 billion last year ( [3]pdf , page 1) on R&D, whereas Nvidia [4]forked out $12.914 billion. It's worth noting that Nvidia's financial statements are numbered one year ahead of the actual period (FY 2026 is 2025 and so on).
>
> Anyway, those figures pale in comparison to how much cash Intel burned through in 2024 to research and develop chip, fabrication technologies, software, and all kinds of tech stuffâ"a staggering $16.546 billion ( [5]pdf , page 25). That's 28% more than Nvidia and a frankly unbelievable 156% more than AMD. The nearest non-US semiconductor firm is Samsung Electronics, which spent a reported $9.5 billion on R&D. That would place third, comfortably ahead of AMD, and it strongly suggests that if you have your own foundries for making chips, you need to spend a lot of cash on finding ways to make better processors.
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/intel-spent-so-much-cash-on-research-and-development-last-year-that-it-outspent-nvidia-by-28-percent-and-amd-by-a-whopping-156-percent/
[2] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-09-02/business/tech/Samsung-hikes-RD-spending-a-worldtopping-71-percent/2389595
[3] https://d1io3yog0oux5.cloudfront.net/_0fe5f5a4cf1d169c12435555bc42ec4f/amd/db/841/9090/financial_tables_pdf/Q4+2024+Gaap+and+Non-Gaap+Earnings+Tables.pdf
[4] https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financial-results-for-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-2025
[5] https://www.intc.com/filings-reports/all-sec-filings/content/0000050863-25-000009/0000050863-25-000009.pdf
Re:OK, cool, but what about your prior? (Score:4, Interesting)
It looks [1]pretty consistent [macrotrends.net] over time to me.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/research-development-expenses
Re: (Score:3)
It's not, that graph shows that Intel's R&D spend has been consistently rising, nearly triple what it was fifteen years ago. And that's consistent with the ever-rising cost of R&D on new process nodes. That never ends, you always need to be working on the next process node, and the costs to develop each node only ever go up.
It's also currently a wasted investment. Intel's been dumping enormous sums of money trying to develop new process nodes, but their 18A (1.8nm) node is suffering from unacceptabl
The joy of stock buy backs (Score:2)
The real problem is Intel despite all the spending has been pulling back on R&d for a while in favor of stock buy backs.
Tsmc is heavily subsidized by the Taiwanese government. Intel gets the usual tax breaks but the money pumping into them from the government is a pretty recent thing and mostly response to covid era chip shortages.
Intel didn't have any serious competition for a long time so they took the money they were making and used it to pump their stock.
This is why stock buy backs are so
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that buybacks are usually a stupid idea, and companies that train investors to expect them are setting themselves up for future pain, if nothing else. And more generally, "I can't think of any way to improve the business I run" is a very weird thing for an executive to claim.
I disagree that Intel's problem was buybacks. I mean, they were dumb, yes, but Intel's problems wouldn't have been solved by that money going to more R&D. Their problems today are rooted in bad strategic bets going back to
Re: (Score:2)
> I agree that buybacks are usually a stupid idea, and companies that train investors to expect them are setting themselves up for future pain
Why? I see this a lot but don't understand people's objection to stock buybacks. Are companies not supposed to ever return profits to their investors? If not, then why invest in that company? Sometimes a deep piggy bank is not in the best interest of a company -- they may end up just squandering it on something stupid like the metaverse or AI. I would much rather see a company return profit to its investors then watch it burn money while management flails and fails at something that is not in their core
Re: (Score:2)
To start where I agree, there can be situations where a company has what amounts to free cashflow and no realistic opportunities to invest it. If that is the normal state of affairs, it should be issuing dividends. But if it is windfall, I can see a buyback being a reasonable way to responsibly handle it.
Otherwise I think they give management too much room to play games at the expense of long-term firm health, both by opportunities for self-dealing and by training investors to expect them.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, consistently rising is consistent.
More specifically, the GP was speculating that R&D dropped while they were doing buybacks; my comment was refuting that.
Absolutely agree that the R&D spend has been wasted on consistently bad strategy.
catching up is costly (Score:2)
Especially when you already suffered brain drain
Re:catching up is costly (Score:5, Insightful)
That brain drain started years and years ago, when they stopped developing their own fabrication processes in-house and started paying outside companies to develop the machines that make their chips. Those companies don't appear to have ironclad NDAs, so they then turn around and use the expertise they developed to develop fabrication machines for others as well.
Great? (Score:2)
Their marketing team should be thrown out of a window. Their engineering folks should stop making uselessly flawed defective chips. Prolly some other shit, too...
Re:Great? (Score:4, Insightful)
The engineers likely want to make good chips. The suits and bean counters want to make maximum profit. Guess who wins.
Who cares? Good Marketing Can Sell Anything (Score:2)
especially if they provide some cool shiny l sticker to slap on mediocre products.
Then why do Intel's products suck? (Score:2)
Money spent is not a measure of research quality.
Not apples to apples (Score:4, Insightful)
Nvidia is fabless. They can outsource the manufacturing of their designs to TSMC.
Actually, building chips is expensive. It needs lots of hardware. Nvidia designs chips. Intel wants to compete with TSMC, and they are WAY behind.
This (Score:3)
Intel is trying to do the hardest thing and do everything, because historically vertical integration was their biggest technical advantage. AMD couldn't swing it (although that was admittedly helped along by Intel's anticompetitive acts) and wound up being better for letting it go. That's part of how they have the fastest processors around today. They also historically had to be better at design than Intel because they lacked the advantage of their then-cutting-edge processes. That design excellence combine
Re: (Score:2)
I can see a set of geopolitical events where Intel ends up a clear winner and everyone else ends up decade behind, trying to rebuild such integration.
Re: (Score:3)
Intel is simultaneously a.) creating a new GPU ecosystem, b.) implementing their 1.8A process node, c.) developing the "nova lake" architecture d.) perfecting "backside" power delivery, e.) building several new fabs.
That's a lot of spending. Apparently, despite what Reddit thinks, they're not planning on going out of business.
Also, Intel is shipping their "Pro" GPUs now: the B50 is out. 16GB of VRAM and 170 INT8 TOPS at 70W for $350. Level1Techs has a review (yesterday) and it looks like a pretty goo
Re: (Score:2)
True, but it seems like the article reached exactly the wrong conclusion. Intel does both chip design and manufacturing. AMD and Nvidia only the former. AMD spends close to what Intel does, as % revenue (31% vs. 26%). Nvidia spends less, but they've recently found a hose that money comes out of.
TSMC, a pure chip manufacturer, spends about 15%.
So the expensive thing seems to be chip design, not manufacturing.