Intel's Lip-Bu Tan: Trump Admin Has 'No Policy' to Meddle

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Nikkei in an interview published October 17 that the Trump administration has no 'policy' to use its minority stake in the chipmaker to interfere in business strategy.

'They don't have any influence on the governance of the company,' Tan said, adding that Intel remains 'independent.' The U.S. government took a 9.9% stake in Intel in 2025 via an $8.9 billion investment, around the same window SoftBank put in $2 billion and Nvidia committed $5 billion to a partnership with the chipmaker.

Masayoshi Son has long-standing ties to Tan. Jensen Huang, in reporting on the Nvidia deal, called Tan his 'long-time friend.'

In the same interview, Tan assessed chips from China as not far behind US technology. He has been circling that view in public: at a DBS panel in Singapore on October 12 he called Chinese AI models including DeepSeek, Kimi and GLM 'good enough,' citing fast adoption. It is the kind of positioning our Intel tracker has caught Tan repeating in a stretch of 18 Intel-related items over the last 90 days.

The reassurance lands against a loud backdrop. Trump had previously written that Tan was 'highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,' before the two negotiated the equity deal.