Qualcomm is interested in buying Intel and has reportedly approached the company in recent days.

Intel has struggled in recent months, having laid off 15,000 employees in August and embarked on a major company-wide restructuring. And while better times may soon be coming in terms of products, it is clear that the problems are far from over. The famous Wall Street Journal reported that Intel could be bought out.

In recent days, interest should have been shown by Qualcomm, which, according to WSJ sources, has already approached Intel. Qualcomm is one of the leading manufacturers of mobile SoCs with ARM architecture. In addition to chips for mobile phones, it has already managed to expand its portfolio to include chips for smart watches, cars and virtual reality, and this year it also entered the laptop market with Snapdragon X Elite/Plus processors. However, Qualcomm designs and manufactures chips only at TSMC, like AMD or Nvidia.

By buying Intel, the company would gain access to the x86 architecture, which only Intel and AMD have rights to, as well as a range of desktop and server products, whether processors or graphics cards, or its own factories, which Intel has recently invested heavily in.

On the other hand, it is not at all clear whether Qualcomm has the cash to buy the entire company, which is currently valued at around $90 billion. So Qualcomm could potentially buy only part of Intel, something Reuters reported a few weeks ago. In any case, according to the WSJ, the parties are still far from a final agreement, and the acquisition would also need to get the green light from antitrust authorities, which could be tricky given Intel’s importance.