Trump eyes US government stakes in CHIPS Act recipients

The policy move under discussion is straightforward in mechanics and ambitious in scope. The Commerce Department, led by Secretary Howard Lutnick, is testing whether federal grants under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act can be converted into equity positions, beginning with a proposed 10% stake in Intel and potentially extending to other major awardees. The stated intent is to secure a financial return for taxpayers and a stronger policy lever over strategically important capacity that is being built with public money. The White House has confirmed that a 10% stake in Intel is being negotiated, with the administration framing it as a creative shift from pure grants to ownership exposure that remains non-voting in nature.

What elevates this from a single-company story to a system-level shift is the explicit exploration of US government stakes in companies beyond Intel. According to sources, officials are looking at how equity could be exchanged for funding at Micron, TSMC, and Samsung, the other large recipients of CHIPS manufacturing awards. Much of the appropriated support has yet to be disbursed, which gives Washington negotiating latitude on terms attached to future tranches.

The legal and administrative terrain is not trivial. Congress did not require equity when it created the $52.7 billion CHIPS program, and it remains unclear how the executive branch could compel share issuance for grants already approved. That uncertainty is not incidental; it goes to the enforceability of an equity-for-subsidy framework and whether the government can standardize terms across recipients without reopening award agreements. In public remarks, Lutnick has argued for an ownership return rather than “giving grants away,” while suggesting any stake would be non-voting. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has characterized the Intel stake specifically as a stabilization measure, again underscoring policy intent without clarifying the legal pathway.

Context matters here. Under prior allocations, TSMC, Micron, and Samsung secured preliminary or finalized subsidies of roughly $6.6 billion, $6.2 billion, and $4.75 billion, respectively, to expand U.S. fabs, with Intel also receiving multi-billion-dollar support. If Washington now attaches equity strings to undisbursed funds, these firms face a recalibrated cost of capital and a different form of state presence on their registers. The policy effect would be to turn grants into quasi-sovereign equity that aligns taxpayer upside with domestic capacity build-out, even as officials emphasise that ownership would not intrude on corporate control.

There is a market-structure dimension as well. Intel just received a $2 billion primary equity injection from SoftBank, becoming a top-ten shareholder at a sub-2% stake. That private capital step-in sits alongside the government’s contemplated 10% stake, a combination that would shore up Intel’s balance sheet while complicating the governance map around future strategic choices, including foundry strategy and potential asset carve-outs. Seen together, the SoftBank investment and the mooted federal stake hint at a coordinated, if not explicitly coordinated, backstop of America’s last scaled advanced logic manufacturer.

For the non-U.S. recipients, the calculus is different. TSMC and Samsung accepted U.S. support to diversify geography, anchor customer proximity, and manage policy risk around export controls. A U.S. sovereign presence on the register would bring new visibility into performance and capacity milestones tied to public money. It would also raise familiar questions in Taipei and Seoul about strategic autonomy, given that semi-sovereign shareholders can influence the tempo of expansion through consent rights, information flows, and conditionality linked to follow-on support. Washington has already tested guardrail concepts in other sectors through instruments like the “golden share” to protect domestic commitments. A move toward equity stakes in chipmakers would be part of the same toolbox, adapted to a sector with global interdependencies and long investment cycles.

From a policy-engineering lens, the aim is to internalize some of the upside and ensure compliance without micromanaging production decisions. If executed as non-voting equity, the state gains a claims stake and stronger disclosure access while minimizing direct governance risk. The trade-off is political and legal complexity, especially if companies argue that retrofitted terms alter the economics they modeled when accepting U.S. incentives. Here the timing of disbursements matters. Where funds have not yet moved, Washington’s leverage is higher; where cash has already landed, renegotiation risks a chill on future onshoring commitments or an escalation to litigation.

There is also a capital-flows angle that regional allocators will watch closely. Sovereign wealth funds and public pensions have historically preferred clean governance lines in critical technology holdings. The insertion of a U.S. government shareholder, even a passive one, could be read as a structural credit backstop for domestic fabs, reducing tail risk for debt investors and vendors. Conversely, it could be interpreted as policy risk for cross-border plants if future administrations change equity expectations or attach additional conditions to export-control compliance. The point is not that one reading prevails, but that the presence of public equity changes how risk is priced across the stack.

For Asia’s financial centers, particularly Singapore with its role in project finance and equipment leasing, the policy experiment will influence how future fab consortia are structured. Vendor financing, local tax credits, and insurance wraps have been stitched around CHIPS-era projects. A federal equity layer would alter priority of claims and information rights, potentially making U.S. projects more bankable if it is seen as durable policy rather than situational politics. That said, durability is not yet established. The White House’s rhetoric is clear; the pathway to standardized terms across firms is not.

What it signals: this is an attempt to convert industrial policy from subsidy to balance-sheet partnership. If the government proves it can take non-voting stakes in multiple CHIPS recipients on consistent terms, the U.S. will have built a repeatable template for crowding private capital into strategic plants while preserving taxpayer upside. If legal constraints or corporate pushback force bespoke deals, the shift will look more optical than structural. Either way, US government stakes in CHIPS Act recipients would mark a visible evolution in how Washington finances, disciplines, and de-risks critical technology capacity.