White House Pulls Out All the Stops to Support Intel, Pressures Apple and Nvidia

Over the past year, the Trump administration has become deeply involved in Intel’s operations and client development, pressuring tech giants like Apple and Nvidia to broker a series of heavyweight partnerships for the company. According to a July 10 report from The Wall Street Journal, this is one of the most direct cases of U.S. government intervention in private tech companies in recent years.

Since CEO Lip Bu Tan took office in March 2025, Intel’s share price has more than quadrupled. The company’s business has shown significant improvement, but challenges remain severe—the foundry business has accumulated operational losses of $10.4 billion over the past four quarters.

Tariff Negotiations as a “Bargaining Chip”: Apple Pushed Toward Intel

Last summer, Apple CEO Tim Cook traveled to Washington to lobby for the Trump administration to abandon its plan to impose a 100% tariff on all semiconductor imports. If enacted, this tariff would have directly increased the cost of Apple’s core products.

Apple ultimately received an exemption, at the cost of committing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars more in the United States. But according to The Wall Street Journal, quoting government officials, during talks with Cook, Trump and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick made another request: they wanted Apple to use Intel’s foundries to manufacture part of its chips.

Subsequently, Trump announced on Truth Social that Apple would begin using chips manufactured by Intel. He wrote: “I decided to help Intel because we need to design and manufacture our chips here in America.”

According to a person familiar with the matter, Apple plans for Intel to produce chips for both MacBooks and iPhones. The report notes that the relationship between the tariff negotiations and the potential Apple-Intel partnership had never previously been disclosed.

Government Invests, Facilitates Follow-up from Nvidia and SpaceX

With the Apple negotiations advancing, the U.S. government took a more direct action—converting $9 billion in federal subsidies into a 10% stake in Intel, making it the company’s largest shareholder.

This move immediately set a precedent.

In September last year, Nvidia announced a $5 billion investment in Intel, along with a purchase of its custom data center chips. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called it a “historic” partnership.

In April this year, Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced that Intel would join its “Terafab” manufacturing program to assist with the “mass design, manufacturing, and packaging of ultra high-performance chips.”

Japanese SoftBank also invested $2 billion in Intel last August.

These capital infusions are of great significance. Intel executives stated that without the immediate capital from the government’s equity conversion, as well as investments from Nvidia and SoftBank, the company would have had to dramatically cut capital expenditures over the past year.

Department of Commerce Deeply Involved, Closely Tracking Foundry Progress

White House involvement goes beyond brokering deals; it extends into daily operations.

According to reports, Lip Bu Tan travels to Washington roughly once a month to meet with Commerce Department officials and regularly calls Secretary Lutnick to report on client relations and business progress.

The Commerce Department’s “Chip Czar,” veteran semiconductor investment banker Bill Frauenhofer, is even more involved—he receives quarterly briefings from Intel CFO David Zinsner, and his team members regularly meet with Intel executives both in Washington and at Intel’s Santa Clara, California, headquarters to track new manufacturing technology developments.

Commerce Department officials have made it clear that they want more chip manufacturing to remain in the United States, rather than in Taiwan, South Korea, or Japan. They are especially focused on Intel’s foundry business and are pushing Intel to expand advanced packaging capacity at its New Mexico plant.

Both Intel and the government believe that advanced packaging is the best entry point for Intel to compete with TSMC. Intel CFO Zinsner stated in January’s earnings call that the foundry business expects to generate billions of dollars in revenue from advanced packaging in the near future—“which is even more exciting than I expected.”

Lip Bu Tan’s Internal Reforms: Cost Cuts, Restructuring, Poaching Rivals

Beyond government backing, Lip Bu Tan himself is driving large-scale internal reforms.

Last September, Lip Bu Tan restructured Intel’s reporting framework, launching a new “Central Engineering Group” and recruiting top chip engineer Srinivasan Iyengar from Cadence to consolidate custom chip design into a unified team.

He also recruited senior executives in large numbers from competitors such as Samsung and SK Hynix, and gave engineer Naga Chandrasekaran greater responsibilities—the latter, with a deep background in semiconductor technology, has become the key sales leader for Intel’s foundry business.

In terms of capital investment strategy, Lip Bu Tan shifted focus from building new fabs to purchasing advanced manufacturing equipment to increase capacity for high-selling products such as notebook and data center CPUs.

The results have begun to show. This April, Intel reported a 22% year-on-year increase in quarterly revenue for its data center business to $5.1 billion, and Google Cloud also announced large-scale procurements of Intel Xeon CPUs for AI workloads. Mark Lohmeyer, Vice President of AI and Compute Infrastructure at Google Cloud, commented: “When they listen to our feedback and act on it, it makes us even more excited to work with them.”

However, Intel still posted a net loss of $3.7 billion for the quarter.

How Far Can the U.S. Government’s “Handpicked” Support Go?

This government-led industrial support has not been without skepticism.

Trade and industrial policy attorney Scott Lincicome from the Cato Institute warned that the White House’s heavy-handed intervention in the transaction decisions of companies like Apple and Nvidia could set a negative precedent, “especially if Intel ultimately fails to fix its foundry business.”

He stated bluntly: “Being the government’s favorite only works when you’re performing well. For Lip Bu Tan, the risk is—once things start going downhill, politicians’ patience is very short.”

Jacob Feldgoise, Senior Research Analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, holds a more optimistic view: “From a technical perspective, Intel seems to be gaining more and more credibility and confidence. With every new client commitment and every new manufacturing process launch, the signals keep getting better.”

Whether Intel can translate the government’s backing into long-term competitiveness remains the market’s biggest question.