U.S. chipmaker Intel has reportedly bid $5.5 billion to $6 billion in cash and stock to buy Israel-based Mellanox.
After reports surfaced in November that Xilinx was preparing a $5.5 billion bid, media based in Israel reported on Wednesday that Intel was also interested in buying Mellanox.
In October, Mellanox hired a financial adviser to help it look at a possible sale after at least two companies expressed interest, according to CNBC.
If the deal reaches fruition, the $6 billion price tag would represent a 30% premium over the last closing price of Mellanox on Nasdaq last night, according to a story by Globes.
The news of Intel's interest in buying Mellanox came on the heels of Monday's news that Intel was investing $11 billion to expand its chip plant in Israel. Intel also announced on Monday that it had received a $1 billion government grant for its expansion.
RELATED: Intel to invest $11B to expand chip plant in Israel
In addition to both having a presence in Israel, Intel has some overlapping products with Mellanox, the latter of which develops chips and servers that are used for faster transmission of big data. Mellanox also offers a range of interconnect products such as adapters, switches, software and silicon that are designed to speed up application runtimes.