Intel Stock Soars As White House Considers Taking A Stake In US Chipmaker

Shares of Intel are up in early morning trading on the heels of a report that the U.S. government is considering taking a stake in Intel. It's said the talks arose from the Trump administration's meeting with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan earlier this week, though it's not clear how close the two sides are to a deal or exactly how big of a stake the White House is interested in taking.

Citing people who are familiar with the plan, Bloomberg reports that a possible deal would help Intel accelerate plans to build a $20 billion mega-site in Ohio. Intel's hope is to make the Ohio plant the largest chipmaking site in the world, though timelines for its completion have changed since Intel first announced its plans as the company finds itself in the midst of a major restructuring effort.

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks in the tech sector. A week ago, President Donald Trump called Tan "high CONFLICTED" and called for his immediate resignation in a post on his Truth Social platform. Tan then met with Trump just days later to clear the air, which prompted a follow-up post by the President praising the CEO's "success and rise" as an "amazing story." In the same post, Trump said Tan would be spending time with his Cabinet members to "bring suggestions" to him during the next week.

Now days later, there is a report of the U.S. government taking a stake in Intel, though neither side is going on record to confirm or deny the rumor.

"Discussion about hypothetical deals should be regarded as speculation unless officially announced by the administration," White House spokesman Kush Desai told Bloomberg.

Should a deal be reached, it would be yet another major move by the White House that is related to the tech sector. Earlier this week, for example, AMD and NVIDIA reportedly reached an agreement to pay the U.S. government 15% of all revenues derived from AI chip sales to China, paving the way to begin or resume shipping AMD's Instinct MI308 accelerators and NVIDIA's Hopper H20 chips.

Prior to that, MP Materials announced a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense that entails a "multi-billion-dollar package of investments and long-term from the DoD," a deal that gives the U.S. government the biggest stake in the rare-earth producer.