There are only a handful of American companies that could easily afford Intel and have any actual expertise to own Intel. The author was confident the company could pull of the purchase so that narrows the list quite a bit:<p>1. Apple - They have the cash, they like to vertical integrate.<p>2. Microsoft - Also have the cash, but probably not a great idea. It doesn't really sync with their software first business approach.<p>3. Nvidia - They have the cash, but antitrust issues arise. With that said, the US would probably allow it. Nvidia often makes their GPUs on non-cutting edge processes anyway, so Intel foundries might save them some money and they were never able to buy ARM like they wanted to.<p>4. AMD - This is less straightforward, it would probably have to be more of a merger than a straight acquisition, which makes me think this is not the company that is being referred to.<p>There are other companies, but I don't think the financials are nearly as straightforward for someone like Broadcom or Qualcomm. They might have the market valuation, but Intel is still the bigger company in terms of revenue.<p>I think it has to be either Apple or Nvidia that is being referenced. I don't think any other company can look at Intel and say 'should we just buy them?' Maybe Microsoft, but I don't think they would know what to do with Intel and it would be another Nokia situation where they do more harm than good.