Intel To Sell Industrial IoT Player Wind River To Focus On 'Growth Opportunities'

Intel is selling industrial Internet of Things software provider Wind River to private equity firm TPG Capital.

Wind River announced its sale to TPG Tuesday, saying the transaction will result in the Alameda, Calif.-based business becoming an independent company. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close in the second quarter.

Wind River has been a player in the industrial IoT market, which has been part of a strategic priority for the parent company. However, Tom Lantzsch, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's IoT group, said the sale of Wind River is "designed to sharpen our focus on growth opportunities that align to Intel's data-centric strategy."

"Wind River will remain an important ecosystem partner, and we will continue to collaborate on critical software-defined infrastructure opportunities to advance an autonomous future," he said in a statement. "We expect this transition will be seamless for our mutual customers and partners."

An Intel spokeswoman told CRN that the sale of Wind River doesn’t run counter to the company’s strategic focus on IoT, adding that the company “will continue to be an important industry partner.” She said Intel considered Wind River a growth opportunity but not one that aligned with the company’s data-centric strategy. “It’s about focusing on other growth opportunities,” she added. Wind River is part of Intel’s Internet of Things Group, whose annual revenue grew 20 percent to $3.2 billion last year, but the subsidiary has been a small percentage of that business group, according to a source close to Intel. The company declined to break out Wind River’s sales but said it is profitable. Intel is not disclosing the sale price of Wind River because it is not financially material to its business, the company spokeswoman said.

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Founded in 1981, Wind River provides embedded operating systems for manufacturing plants, medical devices, aircraft, railway and other industrial sectors, allowing companies to build intelligent connected devices, sensors, gateways and networks that send machine data to cloud and IT environments.

Intel acquired Wind River in 2009 as part of its effort to grow beyond the PC and server markets. The business, which had been operating somewhat as an independent subsidiary, was then fully integrated within Intel in 2017 as part of an effort to better align Wind River with other Intel groups.

Based in San Francisco, TPG was responsible for helping Intel spin out McAfee as an independent company in 2017 when the firm acquired a 51 percent stake in the business that had been known as Intel Security.