The Rundown - Deep Dive: Can Trump Make Intel Great Again?

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

Once an American tech icon and the backbone of the PC revolution, Intel has spent years losing ground to foreign chipmakers. Now the White House is taking Intel under its wing, with billions in subsidies and a 10% stake to force a comeback. It’s industrial policy on a scale America hasn’t tried in decades. Can Trump make Intel great again, or has the company faded too far into irrelevancy? This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Welcome back to the rundown for another weekend deep dive. Today, we are talking about the fallen king of Silicon Valley, Intel. 25 years ago, Intel was the most valuable company in the world. Today, it's a shadow of its former self and fighting for survival. So in today's episode, we're going to break down how Intel went from powering every computer in the world to needing a cash injection by the government. We'll also discuss why the company's survival has become a matter of national security and whether Trump's unconventional approach can actually make Intel great again. We got a great one for you today. Let's dive in. Intel is an OG Silicon Valley company.

It was founded back in 1968 in Mountain View, California, by two engineers, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyes. Now, at first, Intel was focused on making memory chips, but then they had a huge breakthrough in 1971 when they created the world's first commercial micro processor. It was a tiny piece of silicon that changed everything. Suddenly with the micro processor, computers could shrink from the size of a room to the size of a desk. And that kicked off the PC revolution. All of a sudden, every household in America had a computer at their house. And by the 1990s, Intel became a household name with consumers. I remember as a kid seeing the Intel sticker on every computer, and I also remember their jingle from their commercials.

By the early 2000s, Intel was on top of the world. They made the most powerful chips. They had world-class manufacturing, and they had a name brand that everyone recognized. At their peak, Intel controlled over 80% of the global CPU market, and their market cap hit over $500 billion in August of 2000, making them the most valuable company in the world. But then on January 9th, 2007, Steve Jobs walked on stage in San Francisco and introduced the iPhone, and that was the beginning of the end for Intel's dominance. The iPhone came out in 2007 and kicked off the smartphone era, which caught Intel completely flat-footed.

Intel had only focused on making powerful chips for desktops and laptops. This had been Intel's bread and butter for decades, and it was a high-margin business. Intel viewed the mobile market as a low margin side show. In fact, Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, actually approached Intel to make the processor for the very first iPhone. Intel turned him down thinking that it wouldn't be a big enough business. I mean, that might go down as the biggest mistake in tech history. It might go down as the biggest mistake in corporate history.

Because the demand for smartphones was astronomical almost immediately. In fact, by 2010, just three years after the launch of the first iPhone, smartphones had overtaken PCs in sales. The future of computing shifted from your desk to your pocket overnight, and Intel wasn't prepared. They didn't have a mobile chip. In fact, by the time that Intel released the mobile chip, it was too late. On top of that, their chip was terrible. It was too power hungry and inefficient. They didn't have the expertise to design a chip for the mobile world. They couldn't compete with companies like Qualcomm and Samsung who had designed their entire business around mobile. So missing mobile, obviously a huge mistake. But believe it or not, that was just a start.

of Intel's problems. To understand Intel's collapse, you need to know about the company's structure. Because they're a unique chip maker that both design and manufacture their own chips, which is unlike other chip makers. For example, Nvidia just designs their chips and they send it to a foundry like TSMC to actually build it. Intel, on the other hand, is fully vertically integrated, and for a long time, this was a big advantage. It allowed Intel to make state-of-the-art chips better than their competition. But then Intel started running into manufacturing problems. In the chip world, the goal is to make transistors smaller and smaller, which is measured in nanometers. A smaller transistor means a faster, more efficient chip. Around 2015, Intel hit a wall

with their 10 nanometer chips facing years of delays. In fact, it took Intel about three years to perfect the 10 nanometer chip production, and by that time, a chip manufacturer out of Taiwan called TSM was two generations ahead of them. TSM was manufacturing seven nanometer, then five nanometer, and now they're making three nanometer chips. So within the last decade, TSM became the best chip manufacturer in the world, and everyone from Apple, Nvidia, and AMB flocked to them to make their chips. With Intel struggling with manufacturing, their rivals like AMB started to take market share

from Intel, thanks to TSM's advanced manufacturing. Between 2019 and 2024, Intel's market share for PC chips fell from 84% to 69% and for server chips it went from 94% to just 62%. And I think the final gut punch came in 2020. Apple said they were ditching Intel chips in their Macs and MacBooks for their own custom design Apple Silicon chips. I remember when the M1 chip came out, it was so much better than the Intel chips and they continued to be.

And to make matters worse, Intel totally missed the AI boom. Chad GPD launched in November of 2022, kicking off the AI hype, which drove massive demands for GPUs. That's a market that Nvidia dominates. Intel, on the other hand, makes CPUs, which aren't really useful for AI. So once again, Intel wasn't able to participate in the latest wave carrying the tech industry. They missed mobile. They missed AI. And that's why between 2021 and 2024, Intel's revenues dropped by a third, going from nearly 80 billion to just over 50 billion in last year. And the company reported a net loss of almost $18.8 billion in 2024, which was their first loss since 1986. And that explains Intel's terrible stock performance over the years. In the last

five years, Intel stock has lost nearly half its value, while AMD stock has doubled, TSMC stock has tripled, and Nvidia has more than 10xed. So all of this has created a crisis inside Intel, and the CEO office has become a revolving door. Intel is on its fourth CEO since 2018. After CEO Brian Krasanich resigned in 2018, Intel's board made the shocking decision to hire Bob Swan, who was a finance guy with no engineering background to run the world's most complex engineering company, and let's just say it didn't go well. Under Bob Swan, Intel spent nearly as much on stock buybacks over $36 billion as it did

in building new factories. To me, that's malpractice for a company in a capital-intensive industry that was bleeding market share. They shouldn't have been buying back stock at the time and instead investing in the business. Intel's board finally came to their senses and got rid of Bob Swan in 2021 and brought in Pat Gelsinger. And a lot of people liked this higher because Pat Gelsinger was an engineer who had previously worked at Intel. And many people thought that he was going to be the guy who turned Intel around. Pat Gelsinger's plan for Intel was to ramp up Intel's foundry business and build chips. for other companies, competing directly with TSM.

Now, to do this, Pat Gelsinger announced a mind-blowing $90 billion splurge on new fabs in the U.S. But his plan immediately hit a wall because being a foundry isn't just about having factories, it's about having a customer-first culture. TSM is famous for bending over backwards for its clients, while Intel has a reputation for being difficult to work with. That's why potential chip designers were hesitant to work with Intel. So Intel's board lost their patience with Pat. Gelsinger's plan and surprisingly fired him in late 2024. The Intel board replaced him with

Lip Bhutan who immediately started scrapping back projects in Europe and pushing back the timeline for new U.S. factories. So Intel can't seem to stay consistent with the strategy. Many exports now argue that in order to survive, Intel probably needs to break itself apart. The idea would be to sell the chip design division, which is still valuable, and focus 100% on being a pure play foundry like TSMC. A sale of the chip design business could raise over $100 billion, which should be more than enough to fund the Foundry's future. According to semi-analysis, a consultancy, they think that Intel will need to invest a bit over $50 billion between 2025 and 27 to make it competitive in leading edge manufacturing. And more importantly, if Intel was just a Foundry business and

they were truly independent, that could finally persuade chip designers like Nvidia to trust Intel with their blueprints. Right now, chip designers are hesitant to work with Intel because they're afraid that Intel might, you know, steal their design. So Intel needs to figure this out because their survival has now become a matter of U.S. national security. Intel struggles caught the attention of the U.S. government in the 2020s as government officials realized that over 90% of the world's most advanced semiconductor chips were being manufactured by one company, TSMC, in one place, Taiwan. And that became a major national security concern. Semiconductor chips are the most important component of the modern economy, powering everything from iPhones to F-35 fighter jets. And right now,

almost all of the most advanced chips are being made on an island that is literally 90 miles off the coast of China. A conflict in Taiwan could shut down the global tech industry overnight. That realization led to a rare moment of bipartisanship in Washington, and the chipsack was signed into law by President Biden in 2022. This was a $52 billion package designed to revive American chip manufacturing. The idea was to throw money at companies like Intel and others to build new factories in the U.S. that could match the manufacturing capabilities of TSMC. But so far, it hasn't really worked. Intel is still struggling and TSMC is still winning. And that brings us to today and President Trump's plans to save Intel. The Trump administration is planning to take a more hands-on

approach in the Intel turnaround. Commerce Secretary Howard Letnik announced on Friday, August 22nd, that the U.S. government has taken a 10% stake in Intel, making them the largest shareholder in the company. The U.S. government bought 433 million non-voting shares of Intel at $20.47 per share for a total investment of $8.9 billion. Now, of that total, $5.7 billion of the government funds will come from grants under the Chipsack that has already been awarded, but it hadn't been paid yet. The remaining $3.2 billion will come from separate government awards under a program to make secure chips. Essentially, Intel is getting the chipsack money they were always promised, but instead of getting that money for free, the U.S. government is getting an equity stake in the

company. And I should mention the U.S. government's not the only one injecting cash into Intel. The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank is also investing $2 billion into Intel. Now, Intel said the U.S. government won't get a board seat or any governance rights. So the U.S. government can't tell Intel what to do when it comes to running their business. But the fact that the U.S. government is the largest shareholder in Intel creates an interesting dynamic. President Trump could pull more presidential levers to help Intel. He could potentially slap massive tariffs on foreign-made chips, which would make chips from

TSM and other overseas manufacturers way more expensive. He could also require that certain type of equipment like military hardware and government computers and critical infrastructure only use American-made chips, which would be a big boost for Intel. So having the U.S. government as your largest shareholder could end up being advantageous for Intel, but there's no guarantee they're going to turn things around. They still have a long way to go to catch up in technical capabilities of TSM and Samsung. In fact, this thing could end up backfiring because TSM, which is based in Taiwan and Samsung,

which is based in South Korea, might be hesitant to invest in the U.S. now that the U.S. government has a direct investment in their competitor. TSM has been making investments in the U.S. They recently opened up a factory in Arizona making chips, and Samsung is opening up a factory in Texas. But these companies might be less enthusiastic about expanding their operations now. Because, I mean, think about it, why would you invest billions of dollars in a country where the government is actively trying to compete with you? So that's the delicate balance that Trump is going to have to manage. He wants Intel to get back to the glory days.

But for now, he also needs these foreign chip manufacturers to keep investing and building factories in the U.S. while Intel tries to catch up. It's a very unconventional approach to the whole thing, but if it works, it could make Intel great again. So what's the takeaway here? Well, Intel has made a lot of mistakes over the last 10 years, but Intel's comeback is no longer just a corporate story. It's been elevated to a matter of national security, and the U.S. government now has become a direct partner and a major shareholder providing them with cash and political support. But the fundamental question remains, can Intel actually execute? Billions of dollars can build fast?

but they can't magically solve the complex engineering problems that cause the company to fall behind in the first place. And the broader question here is whether this represents a new era of industrial policy, where the government picks winners and losers in strategic industries. If this does end up making Intel great again, there might be more of these kind of government interventions in the future. Well, all right, guys, that's it for today's weekend, deep dive. Hope you guys enjoyed that one. If you did and you have like eight extra seconds,

consider dropping us a comment on Spotify or YouTube. on Spotify or YouTube. And let us know if you think that it's a good idea for the U.S. government to become a shareholder in Intel. And if you think this investment is going to pay off. Also, let us know what topics you want us to cover in future deep dive episodes. As a reminder, we have one more episode dropping tomorrow.

It's going to be an interview with a major shareholder of Open Door. So keep an eye on your podcast feed and your YouTube channel for that one. Super excited for that interview to come out. It got a little contentious. Thank you guys again for listening and watching. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes.

And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow for the interview.