Trump says Intel agreed to give US government 10 pct stake

NEW YORK -- US President Donald Trump said Friday Intel's CEO has agreed to give the US government a company stake worth 10 billion US dollars, roughly equivalent to 10 percent of the chipmaker's market capitalization, multiple US media outlets reported.

"I think you should pay us 10 percent of your company," The Washington Post quoted Trump as saying, recounting his conversation with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan at an event on Friday.

The event is an extraordinary intervention of the federal government into a private tech company, according to the report.

"I think it's a great deal for them. And I think it's a great deal," Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday, CNN reported.

The agreement Trump announced is part of an effort to help boost semiconductor manufacturing in the United States, although it is not immediately clear how the Trump administration aims to be involved in the company's strategic decision-making, according to the CNN report.

Trump also said he would do more of these types of deals. His administration has been weighing opportunities to take similar stakes in various US companies in critical industries, two people familiar with the White House discussions on the matter told CNN last week.

"If the effort happens, it would be among the largest government interventions in a US company since the rescue of the auto industry after the 2008 financial crisis," The New York Times reported Friday. "To prevent the collapse of Chrysler and General Motors, the government poured tens of billions of dollars into the companies and helped them reorganize."

Trump cast the agreement as one that would revitalize the company, saying that "Intel has been left behind" compared to its competitors in the chipmaking industry, Bloomberg said in its report about the event.

"The US taking partial ownership would mark a stunning level of intervention in an American company, shattering norms that investors and policymakers have long considered sacrosanct except in the most extraordinary situations such as war or a systemic economic crisis," Bloomberg reported.

Intel was the largest recipient of US funds as part of former President Joe Biden's CHIPS Act, which sought to provide government grants and tax breaks to semiconductor companies that agreed to build new factories in the United States, Bloomberg said.