Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world

Intel has agreed to the US government taking a 10 per cent stake in the struggling chipmaker, President Donald Trump said on Friday.

“I said, ‘I think it would be good having the United States as your partner’,” Trump said. “[Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan] agreed, and they’ve agreed to do it. And I think it’s a great deal for them,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump’s deal with Intel is the latest move by his administration towards a more interventionist approach to corporate America, one that edges closer to 1960s European state capitalism than US free-market orthodoxy.

Washington confirmed earlier this week that negotiations were under way for the unusual Intel arrangement, which is expected to reappropriate federal grants allocated to the chipmaker under the 2022 Chips Act by turning them into an equity stake.

Intel’s shares were up about 5 per cent on Friday. The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump said he had earlier called for Tan’s removal after Senator Tom Cotton raised concerns about the Intel chief executive’s prior investments in Chinese start-ups.

The president said he had moderated his views after a hurried meeting with the executive last week.

“I liked [Tan] a lot, I thought he was very good, I thought he was somewhat a victim, but you know, nobody’s a total victim I guess,” he said.

Trump added: “We do a lot of deals like that: I’ll do more of them.”

The Intel deal follows arrangements struck with Nvidia and AMD, which were allowed to sell more advanced artificial intelligence processors in China on the condition they channel part of the resulting revenues back to Washington.

Separately, earlier this year, the White House also claimed a so-called golden share in US Steel as a precondition for clearing its takeover by Japan’s Nippon Steel, handing the government veto power over strategic corporate decisions.

Foreign chipmakers such as TSMC and Samsung, which have also been approved for billions of dollars in federal grants, are unlikely to be as receptive as Intel to renegotiating their deals into equity stakes, industry insiders told the Financial Times.

TSMC’s $6.6bn in federal manufacturing grants equates to a minuscule share of its $1tn market capitalisation. TSMC has already completed one advanced chip manufacturing facility in Arizona, with two more under way.

In March it announced plans for three further fabs as part of an additional $100bn investment plan agreed with the administration. It is producing chips for the likes of Apple and Nvidia in the US.

Intel, by contrast, has struggled with securing external customers for its manufacturing operations, and its chipmaking business is losing billions of dollars. It posted an operating loss of $13bn in 2024.

The allocation of its grants under the Chips Act is based on the company hitting certain construction milestones.

Tan’s recent announcement that Intel was slowing its construction plans, including in Ohio, has raised questions about whether it will ultimately receive all of the $10.9bn in funding under the original agreement with the Biden administration, finalised in December.

“This is the most existential investment the US government has ever considered making,” said Daniel Newman, chief executive of The Futurum Group. In terms of US companies, “nobody but Intel can build advanced chips”.