Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC the U.S. government wants a stake in Intel in exchange for CHIPS Act grant money promised under Biden.

Intel is in talks with other large investors to receive an equity infusion at a discounted price, CNBC reported on Wednesday, just days after the struggling chipmaker got a $2 billion capital injection from SoftBank Group .

The US government is in discussions to potentially take a partial ownership stake in Intel, according to an Aug. 18 report by Bloomberg. The deal could help accelerate the construction of Intel’s long-delayed semiconductor manufacturing plant in Ohio.

A US government plan to take a stake in Intel Corp. would give the ailing chipmaker a powerful backer, even if a bigger challenge still lies ahead: finding enough paying customers.

President Donald Trump wants the U.S. government to own a piece of Intel, less than two weeks after demanding the Silicon Valley pioneer dump the CEO that was hired to turn around the slumping chipmaker.

While Grove's focused boldness worked, Tan's way forward must be more nuanced, balancing boldness with humility while resisting the urge to “fix” everything at once.

After months of turbulence, Intel Corp. bulls are finally being rewarded for their patience. But the stock’s sudden rebound comes with a worrying side effect: a valuation so high its most recent precedent is from the dot-com era more than two decades ago.

The seeds for an investment in Intel were planted by the Biden Administration's $52.7 billion CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, legislation designed to provide grants to semiconductor manufacturers to build "fabs," large semiconductor manufacturing plants, on US soil.