Intel faces investor backlash for selling 10% stake to Trump admin at discount
Intel faces investor backlash for selling 10% stake to Trump admin at discount
arstechnica.com
Intel details everything that could go wrong with US taking a 10% stake
44 comments
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I hope they lose billions on this deal. I know I'm only going with AMD now. It's not much, but I do buy all the tech for my company. Servers, laptops, etc... will all be AMD going forward.
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Not having competition is not a good thing. I hope a third player comes along.
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Literally illegal. Only AMD and Intel have the patent cross-licensing rights to make x86 chips. There used to be a third company (Cyrix and subsequently VIA), and (maybe?) still is, but it hasn't been relevant to the desktop CPU market in decades.
The real competition will come from ARM-based computers.
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Heck of an industry to break into.
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Competitor is already here. Apple and Ampere are making ARM systems that fit most users needs. There are ARM servers. But people don’t want to switch.
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Would TSMC be considered a competitor to AMD?
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I've been building computers since 1999, and I've noticed that the industry is cyclical. I've purchased CPUs from both Intel and AMD. We need Intel to succeed, otherwise AMD will dominate the x86 processor market.
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The architecture is in its swan song anyways. Let AMD ride it into the sunset and bid it good riddance.
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intel must still be hanging on purely based on corporate computers? or is there something else they are a large part of?
this just be in my bubble, but i feel like anyone i know over the last 15 years has been exclusively getting AMD, whether theyre tech savvy or just a regular consumer.
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15 years? absolutely not. Before Ryzen in 2017 almost no one was buying AMD.
edit:
AMD is at 32.2% unit share of Desktop/Laptop PCs in Q2 2025. Lots of people still buying Intel.
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I got a new work laptop recently. First one I've ever had that didn't have an Intel cpu. Company is a decent sized multinational.
I think it's already turning. But at the same time I don't think the US can afford to let Intel fail entirely.
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A lot of people I work with still buy Intel based on brand recognition alone. Most are tech savvy people too.
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Their new GPU has a pretty solid price/performance.
CPU is shit though
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Defense contracting.
They do a a good amount of of military industrial contracting and work for 3 letter agencies on data processing/ high performance computing.
They also got awarded government funding in 2024 to build logic chips for the military in-country.
Not enough to sustain the company, but such "sensitive" programs may not be allowed to show up in revenue reports or have to be assigned to other areas or so.
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Ars is making a mountain out of a molehill.
James McRitchie
Kristin Hull
These are literal activists investors known for taking such stances. It would be weird if they didn't.
a company that's not in crisis
Intel is literally circling the drain. It doesn't look like it on paper, but the fab/chip design business is so long term that if they don't get on track, they're basically toast. And they're also important to the military.
Intel stock is up, short term and YTD. CNBC was ooing and aahing over it today. Intel is not facing major investor backlash.
Of course there are blatant issues, like:
However, the US can vote "as it wishes," Intel reported, and experts suggested to Reuters that regulations may be needed to "limit government opportunities for abuses such as insider trading."
And we all know they're going to insider trade the heck out of it, openly, and no one is going to stop them. Not to speak of the awful precedent this sets.
But the sentiment (not the way the admin went about it) is not a bad idea. Government ties/history mixed with private enterprise are why TSMC and Samsung Foundry are where they are today, and their bowed-out competitors are not.
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Really, cos the graph looks like they bounced back to near 12 month highs?
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Good point. But would the share price otherwise have been higher without the government discounted purchase? Share dilution, law of supply and demand, etc are all decent arguments the shareholders could make.
And there's now increased risk that the purchase could cause future strategic and market challenges, especially internationally.
Plus it's not just a share price issue. For example, the fact that shareholders have had their voting power diluted is arguably a concern.
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44 comments
How is this legal?
It's a bailout where the taxpayers actually get something back.
How is it legal to bail out whole banks or other large companies and not get anything in return?
It wasn’t a bailout. It was a grant being converted to an equity position with questionable legality.
Also how is not socialism? Imagine the wailing from Repugnants if the Democrats did this.
Please Google socialism.
Socialism is social ownership of the means of production. This ain’t it. This is Turbo Capitalism.
Public ownership of companies for the benefit of the public is a form of socialism, but Trump's fascist oligarchy serves only the wealthy elites. Oligarchs hijacking democracy for their own benefit isn't socialism.
Beyond the greater issues of corruption, at face value there's no reason the government buying up a company with important strategic value should be illegal
It’s basically the GM bailout but with less steps and specifically avoiding bankruptcy which seems more efficient. Not that the gov’t won’t just turn around and run Intel into the ground.