Trump says Intel agreed to give US a stake in its company

Fri, Aug 22, 2025, 3:24 PM 4 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said that Intel has agreed to give the U.S. government a 10% stake in its business.

Speaking with reporters on Friday, Trump said the deal came out of a meeting last week with Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan — which came days after the president called for Tan to resign over his past ties to China.

“I said, I think it would be good having the United States as your partner,” Trump said. “He agreed, and they’ve agreed to do it.”

Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the agreement.

The struggling Silicon Valley chipmaker has a market cap of just over $100 billion. The agreement comes just after Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group disclosed Monday that it is accumulating its 2% stake in Intel.

The official announcement is expected to come later Friday, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly ahead of an announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity.

What’s happening?

The Trump administration has been in talks to secure a 10% stake in Intel in exchange for converting government grants that were pledged to Intel under President Joe Biden. If the deal is completed, the U.S. government would become one of Intel’s largest shareholders and blur the traditional lines separating the public sector and private sector in a country that remains the world’s largest economy.

Why would Trump do this?

In his second term, Trump has been leveraging his power to reprogram the operations of major computer chip companies. The administration is requiring Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, two companies whose chips are helping to power the craze around artificial intelligence, to pay a 15% commission on their sales of chips in China in exchange for export licenses.

Trump’s interest in Intel is also being driven by his desire to boost chip production in the U.S., which has been a focal point of the trade war that he has been waging throughout the world. By lessening the country’s dependence on chips manufactured overseas, the president believes the U.S. will be better positioned to maintain its technological lead on China in the race to create artificial intelligence.

Didn’t Trump want Intel’s CEO to quit?

That’s what the president said August 7 in an unequivocal post calling for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign less than five months after the Santa Clara, California, company hired him. The demand was triggered by reports raising national security concerns about Tan’s past investments in Chinese tech companies while he was a venture capitalist. But Trump backed off after Tan professed his allegiance to the U.S. in a public letter to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, who applauded the Intel CEO for having an “amazing story.”