Intel’s recent agreement with the US government includes a clause that allows the Trump administration to take an additional five percent stake if the chipmaker’s ownership of its foundry business falls below 51 percent.

Last month, the US government invested $8.9 billion in Intel, equal to a 9.9 percent stake in the company. Of the total investment, $5.7bn comes from funds that would have been awarded through the CHIPS Act, and $3.2bn in funds from the Secure Enclave program.

Intel has already received $2.2bn from the CHIPS subsidies, but the claw-back and profit-sharing provisions in the subsidies will be eliminated.

Commenting on the clause during Deutsche Bank's 2025 Technology Conference last week, as was reported by The Register, Intel CFO David Zinsner said: "It's a five-year warrant for what was roughly about five percent of the shares outstanding. And we created a trigger that, as long as we maintain a majority share of the foundry business, it would never trigger in that five-year period.”

He added: "I think from the government's perspective, they were aligned with that. They didn't want to see us take the business and spin it off or sell it to somebody. And so in some ways, you could view this as a little bit of friction to keep us from moving in a direction that, I think, ultimately, the government would prefer we not move to.“

He went on to confirm that Intel has now received the $5.7bn sum from the government.

Prior to the US government announcing its investment in the company, multiple reports emerged in the media speculating about a potential joint venture that would have seen another chipmaker – likely TSMC or Broadcom – operate Intel’s foundry division.

In late September 2024, Intel reportedly rejected an offer from Arm to acquire the company’s product division after the British chip company made a “high-level inquiry” but was ultimately told the unit wasn’t for sale.

Intel decoupled its Foundry Services business in 2024, with then-CEO Gelsinger telling staff in a September 2024 memo that Intel Foundry would now operate as “an independent subsidiary inside of Intel” in order to provide “external foundry customers and suppliers with clearer separation and independence from the rest of Intel.”

The deal comes after a turbulent time for the US chipmaker, where it has seen its market share eroded both in chip design and manufacturing, damaging the capabilities of the nation's only leading-edge chipmaker.

Having seen chip manufacturing shift to Taiwan's TSMC, Intel has attempted several failed turnaround efforts but was instead left facing mounting losses. As a result, the company has enforced multiple rounds of mass layoffs and canceled or delayed several in-development chip fabs. In July, Intel said that it may be forced to cancel or pause the development of Intel 14A and its successive leading-edge nodes due to financial difficulties.

However, Zinsner said no decisions regarding the future of 14A had yet been made, and the company is still hopeful it will be able to announce a customer for the node in the coming years.

"Lip Bu emphasized this. He's not declaring a customer win until it's a customer win with a real commitment and signature behind it. So all the pipeline stuff, obviously, we track internally, but we're not declaring anything until we've got somebody signed on the dotted line,” Zinsner said. "But if we don't win a big customer next year, I don't think that takes us out of the window of opportunities for 14A. I think '27, we could win customers as well, and that still would get us a good business on 14A."