President Donald Trump on Friday said the U.S. government had reached a deal to take a 10 percent equity stake in the chipmaker Intel, worth approximately $10 billion.
“I said, I think it would be good having the United States as your partner,” Trump said Friday at the White House. “[CEO Lip-Bu Tan] agreed, and they’ve agreed to do it.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed the deal in a post on X on Friday: “BIG NEWS: The United States of America now owns 10% of Intel, one of our great American technology companies.”
Intel posted details of the plan soon afterward, saying the administration would make an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock, paid for with the CHIPS grant money. The company said the stake would be funded with $5.7 billion in grants previously awarded but not yet paid, and $3.2 billion from a separate Defense Department program.
It said the Trump administration will take “passive ownership, with no Board representation or other governance or information rights.”
“We are grateful for the confidence the President and the Administration have placed in Intel, and we look forward to working to advance U.S. technology and manufacturing leadership,” Tan said in a statement.
The deal appears to rewrite the terms of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, under which Intel received $10.9 billion in grants to boost American chipmaking.
The unusual deal drew scattered criticism from Republicans who saw it as violating free-market principles.
“I don’t care if it’s a dollar or a billion dollar stake in an American company, that starts feeling like a semi-state owned enterprise, à la [the Chinese Communist Party],” said Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.), in comments that surfaced Friday. “You’re going to have to explain to me how this reconciles with free-market capitalism.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also publicly criticized the plan this week.
Intel, which has struggled to compete against its global chipmaking rivals, was the largest recipient of CHIPS Act funds. Its continued business problems, as well as Congressional inquiries into CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s ties to Chinese industry, gave Trump an opening to attack the CEO on social media, and pull him into in-person negotiations.
The Trump administration has been taking a heavier hand in the microchip industry overall, including a deal to let Nvidia and AMD export high-tech chips to China in exchange for paying Washington 15 percent of their revenues.
As with the Intel investment, it’s unclear how the government would administer the novel arrangement.
On Friday, several Democratic legislators introduced a bill to limit Trump’s ability to change policy on high-tech national security without consulting Congress, but without Republican support, it’s unlikely to move further.
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