The Scoop
President Donald Trump’s late-night Truth Social post announcing a US chipmaking deal between Apple and Intel sent shares of the chipmaker surging 9% in Thursday trading. Among those surprised were Intel’s own executives, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Intel and Apple have been in talks about a deal to manufacture some chips in the US for months now, that person said. The status of those talks could not be learned. An Intel spokesperson declined to provide a comment on Trump’s announcement. An Apple spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US government last year took a large Intel stake, which was worth about $9 billion at the time. The stake is now worth about $67 billion based on today’s market value. “When I walked in the door, they were a dumpster fire,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Semafor in April. Now, “the fire’s out.”
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Intel has been on an aggressive push to build out its manufacturing partnerships through its foundry business. CEO Lip-Bu Tan told CNBC that the company is starting to see the progress it wants on improving its chip-manufacturing processes, and that customers are taking notice. Semafor reported last year that Intel and AMD had held preliminary talks about a foundry deal, although no agreement between those two companies has yet materialized.
A deal with Apple would provide a boost to Intel’s long-struggling foundry business, which has spent years and billions of dollars trying to challenge rival TSMC.