Trump touts deal giving U.S. 10% stake in struggling Intel

President Trump on Friday announced the U.S. government has secured a 10% stake in struggling Silicon Valley pioneer Intel in a deal that was completed just a couple weeks after he was depicting the company’s CEO as a conflicted leader unfit for the job.

- By MICHELLE L. PRICE AND MICHAEL LIEDTKE

INTEL'S MARKET value is a fraction of the current chip kingpin, Nvidia.

“The United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” Trump wrote ina post.

The U.S. government is getting the stake through the conversion of $11.1 billion in previously issued funds and pledges. All told, the government is getting 433.3 million shares of nonvoting stock priced at $20.47 apiece — a discount from Friday’s closing price at $24.80.

That spread means the U.S. government already has a gain of $1.9 billion, on paper. The remarkable turn of events makes the U.S. government one of Intel’s largest shareholders at a time that the Santa Clara, Calif., company is jettisoning more than 20,000 workers as part of its latest attempt to bounce back from years of missteps taken under a variety of CEOs.

Intel's current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has been on the job for slightly more than five months, and earlier this month it looked as if he already might be on shaky ground after some lawmakers raised national security concerns about his past investments in Chinese companies while he was a venture capitalist.

Trump latched on to those concerns in an Aug. 7 post demanding that Tan resign.

But Trump backed off after the Malaysian-born Tan professed his allegiance to the U.S. in a public letter to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, leading to a deal that now has the U.S. government betting that the company is on the comeback trail after losing more than $22 billion since the end of 2023.

Trump hailed Tan as a “highly respected” CEO in his Friday post. In a statement, Tan applauded Trump for “driving historic investments in a vital industry” and resolved to reward his faith in Intel.