Government expands stake to strengthen Intel

President Donald Trump met with Intel Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan at the White House on Thursday, as the United States government continues to increase its ownership stake in the famous American chip company. 

Trump and Tan discussed the tech firm’s progress in making new and more powerful computer chips in the United States, as America pushes to bring advanced chip manufacturing back home. 

President Trump later posted on his social media network, Truth Social, celebrating the meeting and praising Intel for making what he called “great progress” in its work. Intel is based in Santa Clara, California, and is one of the most well-known names in the computer hardware industry.

Government expands stake to strengthen Intel

Over the past year, Trump noted that the United States government has begun purchasing shares of Intel as part of a national strategy to bolster the country’s chip production capacity. Shares are ownership stakes in a company. Shareholders, whether owned by individuals or a government, become part-owners of that company.

After all, the Trump administration plans to take a 10% ownership stake in Intel. As it stands, the government now owns approximately 5.5% of the company’s shares. Additional shares are expected to be acquired in the future. Intel’s stock price has soared since news first circulated about the government’s plan to buy shares. 

Actually, the share price has increased by more than 70% in that time, making each share far more valuable than before. Higher prices bring great cheer for most shareholders, indicating that their shares are now worth more than they once were. President Trump also claimed that the government had made “tens of billions of dollars for the American people” and pointed to the increase in share value.

In August, when the government purchased Intel shares, the package was valued at about $5.7 billion. The value of the shares currently in ownership is just over $11 billion today, still a robust increase but still below “tens of billions.” There is, however, a murkier aspect to the deal as well. 

Additionally, there are certain shares that the government does not currently own, which it could purchase in the future under certain conditions. If the government held all those shares today, the total value of its stake would be approximately $27.7 billion. But as it stands, those shares aren’t fully owned and hinge on future events, so they don’t count yet. 

Intel pushes to recover lost ground with new chips

When Lip-Bu Tan took over Intel in March, he moved swiftly to improve the company. Intel, for years, was the chief creator of chips. However, gradually, it fell behind other chip companies. Some rivals began to win more customers and also to develop more advanced chips more quickly. 

Consequently, the tech firm has been putting in the work needed to pull itself back. A significant change comes with Intel’s development of a new line of computer processors. These are the “brains” inside computers, tablets and even some intelligent machines. At a major industry conference earlier this week, Lip-Bu Tan confirmed that Intel shipped its first sub-2-nanometer 18A chips at the end of 2025, meeting its scheduled timeline. These chips are extremely small and powerful. 

Smaller chips enable devices to run faster, use less energy, and remain cooler. Although this growth is important, Intel still depend on external chip factories for some of its most essential aspects of production. 

Among them is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest chipmaker, which produces chips for other companies and ranks among the top semiconductor manufacturers globally.

The investment in Intel has also attracted attention from private companies. Nvidia, a global leader in graphics and artificial intelligence chips, and SoftBank Group of Japan have both bought large stakes in Intel worth billions of dollars. 

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