By Andrea Shalal and David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday the government wanted an equity stake in Intel in exchange for cash grants approved during the administration of former President Joe Biden.
Separately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said any U.S. investment in Intel would be aimed at helping the troubled chipmaker stabilize.
Asked about reports that the U.S. was considering taking a 10% stake in Intel, Bessent told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” program: “The stake would be a conversion of the grants and maybe increase the investment into Intel to help stabilize the company for chip production here in the U.S.”
Bessent gave no details about the size or timing of any U.S. stake in Intel, but said any investment would not be aimed at forcing U.S. companies to buy chips from Intel.
Bessent’s comments were the first official response from the Trump administration after Bloomberg News reported on Monday the U.S. government is in talks to take a 10% Intel stake in exchange for $7.9 billion in grants that were approved for the U.S. chip company during the Biden administration.
“We should get an equity stake for our money,” Lutnick told CNBC. “We’ll get equity in return for that … instead of just giving grants away.”
Lutnick said the U.S. does not want control of the company.
“It’s not governance, we are just converting what was a grant under Biden into equity for the Trump administration for the American people.” He suggested any stake would be “non-voting,” meaning it would not enable the U.S. government to tell the company how to run its business.
He made his comments a day after SoftBank Group agreed to invest $2 billion into the chipmaker, which has struggled to compete after years of management blunders.
“The Biden administration literally was giving Intel money for free and giving TSMC money for free, and all these companies just giving the money for free, and Donald Trump turned it into saying, ‘Hey, we want equity for the money. If we’re going to give you the money, we want a piece of the action for the American taxpayer,'” Lutnick said.
Intel and TSMC, a Taiwan-based chipmaker, did not immediately comment.
Intel has struggled financially and recorded an annual loss of $18.8 billion in 2024, its first such loss since 1986.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and David Shepardson, additional reporting by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Andrea Ricci, Rod Nickel)
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