Trump Says He Should Have Asked for "More" of Intel After U.S. Takes 9.9% Stake

U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged in a published interview that he undervalued a landmark deal that gave the federal government a nearly 10% ownership stake in chipmaker Intel, saying he wished he had pushed for a larger share.

In an interview with Fortune published Monday, Trump recounted his exchange with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan during the negotiations. "I asked for '10% ownership for free,'" Trump told the magazine, adding that Tan replied "you have a deal," which prompted the president to reflect: "S---, I should have asked for more."

The remarks surfaced nine months after U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced in August that the government had taken a 9.9% stake in the then-embattled chipmaker. The holding was assembled by converting $5.7 billion in CHIPS Act grants that had been awarded but not yet disbursed into equity, along with $3.2 billion from separate government awards.

Intel's stock has risen more than 300% since the deal was struck. April alone was Intel's best single month in the company's 55 years on the Nasdaq, with the share price more than doubling during that stretch. The chipmaker's market capitalization now stands at $547 billion, compared with $1.84 trillion for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Trump used the interview to argue that Intel's fortunes would have been even stronger under earlier tariff protection. "Intel would have all that business now, and there would be no Taiwan," he told Fortune, referring to TSMC, the Taiwan-based contract manufacturer that has come to dominate global chip production.

The president also said the U.S. was "beating" China on artificial intelligence "by a lot," adding: "It's important that we win."

Intel's rally has been driven in part by a broad resurgence of demand for central processing units. Bank of America predicts the CPU market could more than double by 2030, reinforcing a view that the segment is regaining strategic importance in the AI era. Nvidia told reporters in March that "CPUs are becoming the bottleneck" for AI workloads.

Tan echoed that framing on the company's April earnings call. "The CPU is reinserting itself as the indispensable foundation of the AI era," he said, noting that demand for Intel's data center CPU currently exceeds supply.

Recent business developments have further lifted the company's profile. Earlier this month, Apple and Intel reportedly reached a preliminary agreement under which Intel would manufacture chips for Apple devices. In April, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he plans to rely on Intel's future chips for his $119 billion Terafab project.

Trump's remarks signal that the government's unconventional entry into a semiconductor company's equity structure may be viewed as one of the administration's most financially consequential decisions to date — and, in the president's own telling, one that could have been negotiated more aggressively.

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