The U.S. government has an unrealized gain of about $26.5 billion on its stake in Intel (INTC) after the chipmaker’s shares rose more than 22% in premarket trading Friday following a better-than-expected first-quarter earnings report.
The position arises from an August deal in which the Trump administration converted $8.9 billion in CHIPS Act grants and Secure Enclave funding into 433.3 million Intel shares at $20.47 each, giving it a roughly 9.9% stake. With Intel trading near $81.80 in premarket trading on Friday, the stake is now valued at roughly $35.4 billion, nearly tripling in less than a year.
The government also has warrants to buy an additional 5% stake at $20 per share, options that are now highly valued.
Intel’s rally was fueled by a sharp rise in profits. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, up 7% year over year and above Wall Street expectations of $12.4 billion. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.29, far exceeding the consensus estimate of a loss of $0.01.
The growth was led by Intel’s AI and data center segment, which rose 22% to $5.1 billion as demand for Xeon processors accelerates alongside broader development of AI infrastructure.
CEO Lip-Bu Tan noted a shift in AI computing toward inference and agent workloads, saying the trend is “significantly increasing the need for Intel CPUs.”
Intel guided for revenue in the range of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion for the second quarter.
