We’re in a new era of government intervention in corporate America. The latest example is Bloomberg’s report on Thursday that the Trump administration was in talks to “take a stake” in Intel.͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Aug 14, 2025
The Briefing
By Martin Peers
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Greetings!
We’re in a new era of government intervention in corporate America. The latest example is Bloomberg’s report on Thursday that the Trump administration was in talks to “take a stake” in Intel. Just on Monday, President Donald Trump said he and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had agreed that Nvidia would pay the government 15% of whatever revenues it generates from the sale of AI chips to China, in exchange for Trump approving the export of those chips. Perhaps Trump can use the Nvidia money to pay for the Intel stake!
While it’s hard to think of a precedent for the Nvidia quid pro quo—and it may be unconstitutional—the idea of the government buying into Intel isn’t so crazy. In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. Treasury got stock in both General Motors and Chrysler as part of a massive bailout of those companies during the financial crisis. (The government sold its stakes a few years later). While Intel isn’t in quite the parlous state the automakers were in, it surely needs the help. Revenue fell 16% between 2022 and 2024, and the company lost $19 billion last year. A report in The Wall Street Journal last Friday said the new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, was fighting with Intel chair Frank Yeary over whether Intel should stay in the business of making chips—with Yeary wanting to exit.
An exit would be bad for America’s aspiration to be self-reliant in chips. Remember, while Nvidia contracts out the manufacturing of its chips to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Intel makes its own. That makes it a jewel asset that the U.S. government should want to retain if possible, particularly given the possibility that China could invade Taiwan, which accounts for much of the world’s chip manufacturing. That’s why Trump’s call for Tan to quit last week was so shortsighted—Tan is exactly the person Trump should be supporting. Fortunately, after Tan went to the White House to meet with the president, Trump’s attitude appears to have changed.
The problem with a U.S. government investment in Intel isn’t the idea itself, but how Trump would behave afterward. Given his desire to control everything—he’s even picking the honorees for the Kennedy Center—there’s a chance he’ll want to micromanage Intel if the government owns a stake in the company. And given his tendency to shoot from the hip, that could be a disaster for all concerned (except possibly Intel’s rivals). For the moment, investors interpreted news of the possible investment as a good sign, sending Intel stock up 7%. Long term, though, it could be a different story.
Trade Desk’s Slump
It hasn’t been the Trade Desk’s week. The ad tech firm, which has made a name for itself as the go-to platform for marketers looking to buy ads on streaming TV—as well as on other places on the web—got pummeled on Wall Street last Friday, a day after it reported slowing growth in the second quarter and projected even more of a slowdown in the third quarter.
The stock, which had already been sliding, fell 35%. At the back of everyone’s mind is the specter of Amazon, which has been competing more aggressively with the Trade Desk to become the primary ad broker for the entire web, in an effort to replace Google in that position.
Today The Information reported that one of the Trade Desk’s big clients, Walmart, had renegotiated its deal with the ad tech firm to make it nonexclusive, so Walmart could use other ad tech firms. Walmart isn’t likely to switch to Amazon, but it could switch to others such as Yahoo and Criteo. (In a statement Thursday evening, the Trade Desk said it and Walmart were “fully committed” to their partnership.) The Trade Desk’s stock fell 7% on the news. It’s now down 57% year to date. This is one stock to watch.
In Other News
• TeraWulf, a bitcoin mining firm, said Thursday that Google would help finance its move to lease data center servers for artificial intelligence development. In exchange, Google will get warrants entitling it to 8% of TeraWulf.
• Instagram’s co-head of product, Ashley Alexander, is leaving Meta Platforms (more here).
• A group of more than 80 CEOs at crypto and fintech firms signed a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to block U.S. banks, such as JPMorgan Chase, from charging fees for access to customer data. Such fees could threaten the business model of fintech firms.
• Cohere, a Canadian AI developer that competes with Anthropic and OpenAI, said Thursday it had raised $500 million at a $6.8 billion valuation including the new money. The AI lab also said it had hired Joelle Pineau, Meta Platforms’ former vice president of AI research, as its new chief AI officer.
• Oracle and Google have expanded the cloud agreement they announced last year to let the database giant’s cloud customers rent access to Gemini models.
Today on The Information’s TITV
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