U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press aboard Air Force One en route to the United States after an official visit with President Xi Jinping in China, May 15, 2026.
Evan Vucci | Reuters
US President Donald Trump said he should have asked for more investment in chip makers. intelIt’s been nine months since the landmark deal in which the U.S. government acquired a 9.9% stake in the company.
In an interview with Fortune Magazine published Monday, President Trump said in an interview with Fortune magazine that he asked for “10% free ownership” of the company, to which Tan replied, “I have a deal,” and the president said, “Well, I should have asked for more.”
Trump also told the magazine that if he had taken office and protected Intel with tariffs, Intel would have been “the biggest company in the world right now” “when all these companies started shipping chips from China.”
“Now Intel will get all that business and Taiwan will not exist,” he added. TSMCone of the world’s leading chip manufacturers based in Taiwan. TSMC’s market cap is $1.84 trillion, while Intel’s is $547 billion.
In August, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the U.S. had acquired a stake in a semiconductor maker whose stock price had plummeted in recent years. The $5.7 billion in government grants awarded but not paid under the CHIPS Act was converted into equity, along with $3.2 billion in other government grants.
Since then, Intel’s stock price has increased more than 300%.
Early this month, apple Intel has reportedly reached a tentative agreement to make some chips for Apple devices, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in April that Tesla intends to rely on Intel for future chips in its $119 billion Terafab project.
President Trump told Fortune that the United States is “far ahead” of China in AI, adding: “It’s important that we win.”
April was Intel’s best month in the company’s 55 years on the Nasdaq, with its stock more than doubling.
Intel’s stock price rise coincides with a resurgence in demand for the company’s central processing units (CPUs).
Bank of America predicts the CPU market could more than double by 2030, and Nvidia told CNBC in March that “CPUs have become the bottleneck” for AI.
“CPUs are once again re-establishing themselves as the essential foundation of the AI era,” Tan said during the company’s earnings call in April, adding that demand for data center CPUs exceeds supply.
