Trump tweet:

It is my Great Honor to report that the United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future. I negotiated this Deal with Lip-Bu Tan, the Highly Respected Chief Executive Officer of the Company. The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars. This is a great Deal for America and, also, a great Deal for INTEL. Building leading edge Semiconductors and Chips, which is what INTEL does, is fundamental to the future of our Nation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Why does he always close with "Thank you for your attention to this matter"? Does he think he's got his big boy pants on or something?

Trump tweet:

It is my Great Honor to report that the United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future. I negotiated this Deal with Lip-Bu Tan, the Highly Respected Chief Executive Officer of the Company. The United States paid nothing for these Shares, and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars. This is a great Deal for America and, also, a great Deal for INTEL. Building leading edge Semiconductors and Chips, which is what INTEL does, is fundamental to the future of our Nation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Are you happy now, communists? We're nationalizing companies.

So how did they get all that stock for free?

So how did they get all that stock for free?

The stake will be paid for through $5.7 billion in grants previously awarded to Intel under the 2022 U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, plus $3.2 billion awarded to the company as part of a program called Secure Enclave. It’s a formerly classified initiative that Congress appropriated funds for in 2024 after lobbying by Intel, Politico reported in 2024.

Including $2.2 billion in CHIPs grants Intel has received so far, the total investment is $11.1 billion, or 9.9%. Intel is valued at about $108 billion on the stock market.

Why does he always close with "Thank you for your attention to this matter"? Does he think he's got his big boy pants on or something?

When Biden was president the Democrats passed the Chips Act, which has grants for chipmakers to build in the US. When Trump took power he basically stopped issuing these grants to companies that were set to get them.

My understanding is that basically Intel will give 10% of itself if Trump stops blocking the grants it was already set to get. I guess Intel's thinking is that if they make the US a part owner, then Trump won't obstruct the company so much.

This might sound like good news (kind of) in that the government is getting equity in return for the money, but I doubt Trump will enforce the original requirements and purpose of the grants, so Intel probably won't end up finishing many of the factories it was supposed to build. It also sets a precedent that you can't rely on goverment grants to do things as future parties may change the terms of the deal retroactively, even after you already started.

I don't understand why they would want to build in the US? There's plenty of places with cheaper labour.

Yes, but also because they're just better chips and you probably should have only been getting them to begin with. Way more power efficient, smaller process, less heat, easier to upgrade, better multi core performance, lower price; you just get a better CPU.

China's internal market is far more cutthroat and "capitalist" than that of the USA. And less regulated. And less monopolized, except for a few services which, ahem, are mandated (WeeChat, yes).

That was their "unique path", to move all hierarchical stuff into political entities. It look interesting on a large scale, from more "peasant-oriented" communism, kinda changing the initial Marxist picture of worker-capital relations, to this.

so they wont?

They were already providing capital without the seizure. So yeah, this is seizing.

Note that better multicore perf is not true through the entire stack, because Intel chips have p core making them have better multicore perf in a lot of price-competitive offerings.

But the current platform is quite dead, you won't get upgrades for it

In case of war the country needs national supply of chips to put in rockets, planes, everything really.

If you make everything in Taiwan and that's the place that's getting blockaded by enemy Navy...

i recently got an nvidia but then i switched to linux after and nvidia is so terrible on linux so this was a good push to get a new one.

P cores give them better single core performance. But in parallel computing AMD has the advantage and has defended it for a long time now.

Are you happy now, communists? We're nationalizing companies.

Why does he always close with "Thank you for your attention to this matter"? Does he think he's got his big boy pants on or something?