From dominance to disruption in the tech landscape

WE HAVE just witnessed one of the most bizarre developments in the history of technology. It involves a technology company that defined an era. Fast Company is documenting the history of Intel and its impact on society as artificial intelligence is challenging its grip on power. Here's our first stab at the history of technology companies as outlined by Harry McCracken.

- WESLEY DIPHOKO

On August 22, President Donald Trump announced via Truth Social that the US federal government had acquired 10% of Intel. The chipmaker’s news release trumpeted the deal as “historic.” That it was. But it was also ignominious.

In Trump’s own account, he had humbled an iconic American company. Maybe even shaken it down. Fifteen days earlier, he posted to Truth Social that Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan had ties to China, which left him “highly CONFLICTED” and demanded his immediate resignation. On August 11, Tan visited the White House. On August 22, the deal was official.

The US's ownership stake in Intel doesn’t involve any new funds. Instead, it's a retroactive quid pro quo for $8.9 billion the company had already been granted but not yet paid through the US CHIPS and Science Act. Joe Biden signed that bill three years ago, a $280 billion gambit to reverse the decades-long flight of chip manufacturing to Asia.

As Trump put it, Tan “walked in wanting to keep his job, and he ended up giving us $10 billion [the approximate value of the 10% stake] for the United States”

Notably, The Wall Street Journal's Robbie Whelan, Yang Jie, and Amrith Ramkumar reported that Taiwan's TSMC, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, pushed back against forking over any equity to the US — even if declining to do so would require it to give up CHIPS Act money it was getting to help expand its production capacity in Arizona.