Update: Currency exchange rates have been corrected. I'm sorry for any confusion!

Intel Foundation is selling off its remaining stake in UK-based Imagination Technologies (IMG.LN). According to JP Morgan, Intel is selling off 13.4 million shares (4.9% of Imagination Technologies) for 245 GBp each. Once all shares are sold, Intel will gross just north of $50.57 Million USD.

Imagination Technologies' PowerVR Rogue Series 6XT GPU is used in Apple's A8-series chips.

Intel first invested in Imagination Technologies back in October of 2006 in a deal to gain access to the company’s PowerVR graphics IP portfolio. Since then, Intel has been slowly moving away from PowerVR graphics in favor of it’s own internal HD graphics GPUs. (Further, Intel sold off 10% of its IMG.LN stake in June of last year.) Even Intel’s low cost Atom line of SoCs has mostly moved to Intel GPUs with the exception of the mobile Merrifield and Moorefield” smartphone/tablet SoCs.

The expansion of Intel’s own graphics IP combined with Imagination Technologies acquisition of MIPS are reportedly the “inevitable” reasons for the sale. According to The Guardian, industry analysts have speculated that, as it stands, Intel is a minor customer of Imagination Technologies at less than 5% for graphics (a licensing agreement signed this year doesn’t rule out PowerVR graphics permanently despite the sale). Imagination Technologies still has a decent presence in the mobile (ARM-based) space with customers including Apple, MediaTek, Rockchip, Freescale, and Texas Instruments.

Currently, the company’s stock price is sitting at 258.75 GBp (~$3.99 USD) which seems to indicate that the Intel sell off news was “inevitable” and was already priced in or simply does not have investors that concerned.

What do you think about the sale? Where does this leave Intel as far as graphics goes? Will we see Intel HD Graphics scale down to smartphones or will the company go with a PowerVR competitor? Would Intel really work with ARM’s Mali, Qualcomm’s Adreno, or Samsung’s rumored custom GPU cores? On that note, an Intel powered smartphone with NVIDIA Tegra graphics would be amazing (hint, hint Intel!)