A look at Intel Capital before the 34-year-old firm strikes out on its own

When Intel Capital announced his plans to spin from semiconductor giant Intel in January, it came a bit of a shock, since the company has been active as Intel’s Venture Investment Arm since 1991.

In many ways, this decision marks the end of an era for what is considered by some to be the first company capital company of all time. The company was founded almost 35 years ago and supported remarkable Enterprise technology companies, including: Docusign, Mongodb and Hugging, among almost 2,000 others.

But for Mark Rostick, vice -president and senior director of Intel Capital, the transition offers a new chance for the VC, while the company could keep many of the benefits it as CVC.

Rostick came to the company in 1999 after a friend in Intel Capital had recommended that he should try to get a job there. Rostick, who did not like to work as a technical license lawyer at the time, recorded her. After he met the team, he said he would do everything – even mopping the floors – to participate.

“You get to work with the smartest people in the world,” Rostick told WAN. “The most difficult thing to do in business is to start something from nowhere and let it literally leave the ground. Those are the coolest people to hang out because they do something special. The combination of being able to use that training that I had [combined] With working with people who did the most difficult in business, it was irresistible to me. ‘

Rostick has been hanging around for more than two decades and saw the company investing more than $ 20 billion in more than 1,800 companies while giving more than 700 startup outputs.

The thought of Intel Capital who spoked from his parent company was not new, Rostick said, and was discussed several times in the past. The debate was always focused on the advantages and disadvantages of how the company could move faster, or in itself more agile, but also how much the company should give up without a parent company.

But these conversations started to become more serious at the beginning of 2024 and became concrete last fall, Rostick said. He added that he and Anthony Lin, the head of Intel Capital, were able to get the team at ease with the idea to hit himself.

“We thought our track record deserved attention from external investors,” said Rostick. “We had done very well, even though, you know, much of the venture industry was unable to achieve outputs, we had had some success, so we had the feeling that we could position ourselves a bit of a good one.”

He added that the exit of Astera Lab helped with their timing last year. Intel Capital initially supported Astera Labs in 2018. The semiconductor company became public in March 2024 with a rating of $ 5.5 billion. A year later, Astera Labs has a market capitalization of $ 9.8 billion, which supports one of the most successful outputs of the company of 2024.

This success, Rostick said, may also have shown potential LPs that Intel Capital was a company that made the right bets and saw capital returns simultaneously with very little excluded by companies. Last year, the outputs of $ 149.2 billion were supported by the American company, according to PitchBook -Datawhich is considerably lower than years such as 2019, $ 312 billion, even when you exclude $ 841 billion from bijer years such as 2021.

It is not 100% clear that everyone at Intel Capital was actually on board with the change. There were several departure at the director’s level alone, because this spider -off conversations were said to be serious, including: Mark Lydon, Arun Chetty, Sean Doyle and Tammi Smorynski, all of whom had been to the company for more than 20 years, as if for more than 20 years Originally reported By Axios.

A spokesperson for Intel Capital said that the recent deviations were not bound by the news of the company that came out.

This step also comes at an interesting moment for the parent company of the company that has had a tumultuous year. Former CEO Pat Gelsinger suddenly retired on December 1 – he had been discussing with the company about spinning, Axios reported. The company has since had to postpone the opening of its Chip factory in Ohio and decided not to market Falcon Shores AI -Chip. It also added LIP-BU TAN as his new CEO who reportedly has radical changes in mind for the company.

Anyway, the spider -off continues.

The company expects to be completely independent somewhere in the third quarter of 2025, Rostick said. The new company that is still too mentioned will now be very similar to Intel Capital on Intel Capital, he added. The company will keep Intel as Achor investor and will still invest in startups at an early stage in the same areas: including AI, Cloud, Devices and Frontier Tech. The company will probably be fundraising shortly after the formal spinout.

“We have socialized the idea with people and have the feeling that we have received a fairly good reaction,” said Rostick. “We are not naive. We know it will be a difficult process.”

The success of this new solo company with the market to decide. But in the meantime, despite everything else, Rostick said that the company continues to work as usual as usual.

“We invest in new opportunities that are actively looking for it,” said Rostick. “We maintain the portfolio by following us where it is deserved and makes sense to everyone. And you know, managing a portfolio outputs as we would always do. If we make the switch, we will continue at the same speed when we go today, this has always been the plan.”