Intel shares rose about 5.5% Friday on Wall Street following a Bloomberg report that the Trump administration plans to announce a purchase of a stake in the struggling chipmaker.
Following the report, U.S. President Donald Trump said the government should acquire roughly 10% of the company, which has a market value of over $100 billion. “They agreed to do it, and I think it’s a great deal for them,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Earlier this week, reports suggested that if the deal goes through, the administration would become Intel’s largest shareholder, signaling a significant vote of confidence in the company.
A senior White House official told CNBC that “ongoing discussions” with Intel were underway and that nothing had been finalized. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has not yet explicitly agreed to the deal, and a company spokesperson declined to comment. Trump and Tan are scheduled to meet later Friday afternoon.
The move reflects a broader shift in U.S. industrial policy, with the government taking an active role in private corporations. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC that the government seeks an equity stake in Intel in exchange for previously allocated grants under the CHIPS Act. “We need to get an ownership stake for our money,” Lutnick said. He emphasized that the government’s stake would carry “no voting rights.”
Intel received another vote of confidence earlier this week when SoftBank announced a $2 billion investment in the chipmaker, representing roughly 2% of the company.
Intel is the only U.S. company capable of producing the most advanced chips domestically, although its technology lags behind Taiwan’s TSMC, which manufactures chips for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, and even Intel itself.
The company has invested billions in building a new semiconductor campus in Ohio, dubbed the “Silicon Heartland,” which will eventually produce the most advanced chips, including for AI applications. However, in July, Tan told employees the company was slowing construction due to market conditions, saying, “No more empty promises.” The Ohio campus is now expected to begin operations in 2030.
Intel last fall finalized nearly $8 billion in grants under the CHIPS Act, passed in 2022 under the Biden administration, to fund the Ohio campus project.