Updated August 22, 2025 at 5:55 PM EDT
President Trump said on Friday he had asked Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan for a 10% stake in the company during a recent meeting at the White House.
"He agreed, and they've agreed to do it, and I think it's a great deal for them," Trump told reporters. "He walked in wanting to keep his job, and he ended up giving us $10 billion for the United States," Trump said.
In a statement released on the company's website late Friday afternoon, Intel confirmed that the government would make an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock "reflecting the confidence the Administration has in Intel to advance key national priorities and the critically important role the company plays in expanding the domestic semiconductor industry."
Part of the government's stake, worth $5.7 billion, would be funded by grants awarded, but not yet paid, to the company under the CHIPS and Science Act, the 2022 law that authorized a total of nearly $53 billion in government funding for chip-related activities. Intel said it already received $2.2 billion in CHIPS grants, making a total investment of $11.1 billion.
Another $3.2 billion will be awarded to the company as part of the Defense Department's Secure Enclave program, which funds semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.
The company's statement said that under the terms of the deal, the government has agreed to purchase 433.3 million primary shares of Intel common stock at $20.47 per share, equivalent to a 9.9% stake in the company. The government will have no board representation or other "governance or information rights," according to the statement, and the government agreed to vote with the company's board on matters requiring shareholder approval, with limited exceptions.
On Truth Social, Trump called it a "great Deal for America and, also, a great Deal for INTEL. Building leading edge Semiconductors and Chips, which is what INTEL does, is fundamental to the future of our Nation."
The deal is a highly unusual step — it marks an escalation in the Trump administration's efforts to push chipmakers to manufacture in the United States, and a new milestone in how willing CEOs are to cede the president an unprecedented amount of control over their companies.
Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick previewed the deal in an interview on CNBC. "So we'll deliver the money, which was already committed under the Biden administration. We'll get equity in return for it," Lutnick said.
After Trump's remarks Friday afternoon, Lutnick posted on X that the U.S. "now owns 10% of Intel," and he called it a "historic agreement."
Intel, once a leader in chip production, has faced a raft of problems in recent years.
It has stumbled in the race to feed soaring data center demand for chips used to build artificial intelligence models known as graphics processing units, or GPUs. The leader in that field is Intel's Santa Clara, California-based neighbor Nvidia, now the world's biggest company with a market capitalization of over $4 trillion.
(Earlier in August, Trump announced that Nvidia would pay the U.S. government 15% of its revenues of H20 chip sales in China in exchange for being allowed to sell them there. An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment to NPR on the 15% figure, and in a statement, the company said it follows "rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.")
Intel's revenue has fallen in recent years, driving its market capitalization down. This year, the company reported net losses for the first two quarters.
President Trump took direct aim at Intel CEO Tan earlier this month, calling on him to resign following reports he invested in a range of Chinese tech companies. Days later, Tan went to the White House for a face-to-face meeting with the president, after which Trump called the meeting "interesting" and Tan a "success."
Intel is planning to invest more than $28 billion in two chip production facilities in Ohio, but the plans have been delayed and analysts say it is unclear if there will be sufficient demand for the chips the company eventually produces.
"One of the questions that we still haven't seen answers to yet in the public sphere, at least, is how this discussion about equity financing relates to the question of who's going to be the customer for Intel's factories that are being built and their processes or their manufacturing processes that are being brought online," said Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts University and the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology.
"That's a key part of the puzzle," he said, adding it was too early to know if a potential equity deal would be a boon for Intel or complicate the company's efforts to try to lead the field again.
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