Intel Considering Spinning Off its Network and Edge Group

According to a report over at CRN, Intel is looking at spinning off its Network and Edge Group—also known as NEX—and is now looking for investors to take over the business unit. This is according to an internal memo that CRN has been privy to, and it was sent out by the Network and Edge Group lead, Sachin Katti, who has recently been promoted to Chief Technology and AI Officer at Intel. For those not familiar with the Network and Edge Group at Intel, this is the division that makes Intel’s Ethernet chips and communications products, as technically it’s no longer doing edge computing, since that business was merged with its Client Computing Group in September 2024.

It appears that Intel won’t divest the group entirely, as the company “will remain an anchor investor in the new company.” This would make sense, as it would allow Intel to continue to influence the direction of product development and still have direct access to the products the new entity will produce. Katti also wrote that this should help NEX “expand into new segments more effectively,” whatever those might be, although it’s unclear why Intel was unable to do this on its own. Katti continued the memo with “What we expect to change is our ability to operate with greater focus, speed and flexibility—all to better meet your needs,” suggesting that Intel’s customers have found other partners that better suit their requirements. Over the past few years, Intel has struggled with some of its recent 2.5 Gbps Ethernet products, as they’ve had several bugs that haven’t been properly resolved in some cases, despite multiple hardware revisions. The company launched new 2.5 and 10 Gbps Ethernet products in the E610-series earlier this year, but there doesn’t appear to have been much market uptake of the new products either. The question now is how many more business units Intel can shed, until there’s nothing but the core CPU business left.