IBM’s hopes of pulling off another fire-sale of one of its businesses look to have been dashed, with reports suggesting that GlobalFoundries, Inc. has pulled out of a deal to buy IBM’s loss-making semiconductor division.

Bloomberg says that GlobalFoundries refused to budge on its valuation of the business, which was reported listed for sale last February when Big Blue retained the services of Goldman Sachs to put a valuation on it.

GlobalFoundries, which is owned by an investment arm of Abu Dhabi’s government, was long considered to be the front-runner in any such deal. Speculation intensified earlier this month, when the company hired ex-IBM employee Henry DiMarco as its new VP for site construction and facilities. DiMarco was previously responsible designing, building, and running IBM’s 300mm chip factory in New York. GlobalFoundries is also a key supplier of chips to Big Blue.

But no matter how good a relationship the two firms have, it looks like any deal is off the table. Bloomberg cites unnamed “people with knowledge of the matter”, who say that negotiations have completely broken down. Those anonymous sources also say GlobalFoundries wasn’t really interested in the business at all, but was looking to snatch up IBM patents and engineers. As for the businesses’ manufacturing facilities, GlobalFoundries deemed these to be of “little or no value,” Bloomberg said.

It’s not clear if Big Blue has any other buyers lined up, but even if it does find a buyer, it’s unlikely to ditch the chips market altogether. Earlier this month, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty announced said the company will spend a whopping $3 billion on chip R&D over the next five years. The plan is to utilize bleeding-edge technologies like carbon nanotubes and silicon photonics to reduce its transistor sizes to just 7nm.

Rometty didn’t commit to building the chips, though, so it remains to be seen whether IBM will make its own chips or offload them to someone else.

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