Altera, the programmable chip company spun out of IntelINTC

, is growing roughly 20% annually and more than doubling operating income as it prepares for an eventual public listing.

CEO Raghib Hussain told Reuters the company grew more than 20% last year and expects mid-20% growth again this year, though it doesn't disclose specific figures as a private company.

Altera became fully independent last September after Intel agreed to sell a 51% stake to Silver Lake for $4.46B, valuing the company at $8.75B. Intel retains a 49% stake.

FPGAs as the nervous system of AI

The turnaround is going strong. Intel had reported Altera revenue of $1.5B in 2024, down sharply from $2.9B in 2023, as buyers shifted spending toward GPU chips for AI and the company lost market share to AMD-owned Xilinx.

Hussain is repositioning Altera around a simple idea: GPUs do the heavy AI computing, while Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) help move data between chips quickly and efficiently.

He projects FPGA content of $100 to several hundred dollars per robot, which he says could create a market worth $100B to several hundred billion dollars over a decade.

Altera is also expanding beyond commercial AI. The company recently announced it's working with the Defense Innovation Unit to develop an optical communications prototype for the RAZORBAC program, which targets resilient, high-bandwidth optical networks across space, air, and ground environments.

The prototype uses Altera's Agilex FPGA technology and is designed to support interoperable optical links across satellite constellations, with potential applications in both defense and commercial broadband.

Altera's AI acceleration platform also supports custom network interface cards and SmartNICs built on its Agilex 7 and Agilex 9 devices, targeting AI training clusters, distributed inference, and high-throughput data environments.

Execution and supply chain

On the operational side, Hussain said Altera produced working prototypes of six new chips last year and cut its dependence on transition service agreements with Intel from 125 down to 15.

The company says it's the only programmable chip supplier in full production with DDR5 memory for mid- to high-end chips, and it has built a memory stockpile to buffer against current shortages.

Altera manufactures chips with both Intel Foundry and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, and is developing products on TSMC's 2-nanometer and 3-nanometer technologies.

The company's path to an IPO is in the works, but the growth figures and operational independence Hussain is flagging publicly suggest it's being built toward one. Investors watching the AI infrastructure space will want to track whether Altera can hold that mid-20% growth rate as competition from AMD's Xilinx intensifies.