Almost a year after Intel announced it was launching Altera as a standalone FPGA (field-programmable gate array) business, it has finally become an independent company.

While the company is still owned by Intel and will maintain a strategic partnership with the chipmaker, the newly independent Altera will now have greater flexibility to work with other foundries in the future.

Posting on X, formally Twitter, Altera said: “Today (January 7) marks a proud milestone as we officially raise the Altera flag as an independent FPGA company! We're excited to drive the future of innovation with agility and focus, shaping the next era of #FPGA technology…”

Altera was originally a chip manufacturing company that was acquired by Intel in 2015 for $16.7 billion and merged into the company’s data center unit under the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) brand.

Intel first announced it was spinning out the company in February 2024. The independent Altera will sell reconfigurable chips for systems across data center, cloud, industrial, and automotive markets. It will be run by Sandra Rivera, the former head of Intel’s data center and AI (DCAI) organization.

When the spin-out was first announced, Rivera said Altera would have an addressable market of $55bn in the coming years.

FPGA chips consist of logic blocks that can be configured by the customer on the spot to accelerate specific workloads. These programmable chips can then sit alongside microprocessors to make hardware that is faster and more open to a software-defined approach.

While Altera appears to be optimistic about its fresh start, much like its beleaguered parent company Intel, it has its own financial woes to overcome. In Q3 of 2024, Altera’s revenue was down 44 percent year-over-year to $412 million.