The extraordinary development follows a meeting between CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Trump after he called for Tan’s removal.
The United States government will take a 10 percent stake in Intel under an agreement with the struggling chipmaker, President Donald Trump has said, marking the latest extraordinary intervention in corporate affairs.
Trump made the announcement on Friday. Intel, whose shares rose more than 6 percent, declined to comment.
The development follows a meeting between CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Trump earlier this month that was sparked by Trump’s demand for the Intel chief’s resignation over his ties to Chinese firms.
“He walked in wanting to keep his job and he ended up giving us $10bn for the United States,” Trump said on Friday.
The move marks a clear change of direction and also follows a $2bn capital injection from SoftBank Group in what was a major vote of confidence for the troubled US chipmaker in the middle of a turnaround.
Federal backing could give Intel more breathing room to revive its loss-making foundry business, analysts said, but it still suffers from a weak product roadmap and challenges in attracting customers to its new factories.
Trump, who met Tan on August 11, has taken an unprecedented approach to national security.
The US president has pushed for multibillion-dollar government tie-ups in semiconductors and rare earths, such as a pay-for-play deal with Nvidia and an arrangement with rare-earth producer MP Materials to secure critical minerals.
Tan, who took the top job at Intel in March, has been tasked to turn around the US chipmaking icon, which recorded an annual loss of $18.8bn in 2024 — its first such loss since 1986. The company’s last fiscal year of positive adjusted free cash flow was 2021.
Earlier this week, US Senator Bernie Sanders supported the plan. He and Senator Elizabeth Warren had previously said that the US Treasury Department should receive a warrant, equity stake or senior debt instrument from any company that receives government grants like Intel had under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which sought to lure chip production away from Asia and boost US domestic semiconductor output with $39bn in subsidies.
A formal announcement of the investment is expected later on Friday.