In August 2025, the Trump administration raised eyebrows by making a $8.9 billion investment in US chipmaker Intel, as part of a massive $100 billion drive to boost semiconductor supplies.
At first, it looked like an excellent investment as the AI race heated up as Intel saw shares shoot up, reaching just over $92 a share by Thursday of last week, more than quadrupling the government’s initial investment, as Yahoo Finance reports.
But by Friday, the situation looked dramatically different. Intel experienced its worst one-day stock performance since 1974, with shares cratering almost 30 percent on Friday alone. According to Yahoo, that means the value of the government’s 9.9 percent equity stake crashed from almost $40 billion to well under $30 billion, slicing over $11 billion in taxpayer-funded investment off its stake.
Intel’s shares are currently hovering at just over $60, well short of the “NOW $95” displayed in an AI slop image president Donald Trump shared of himself as a day trader in September.
The dramatic swing perfectly encapsulated why the government taking a major stake in a publicly traded company could result in investors being taken on a rollercoaster ride as the value of the Trump administration’s portfolio swings wildly.
Intel’s bruising Friday came after its shares had risen some 150 percent since the beginning of the year, cashing in on the seemingly limitless appetite for AI investments. But the company’s reported Q4 revenue outlook fell short of Wall Street expectations, triggering the major $150 billion market value wipeout.
Nonetheless, the chipmaker still managed to beat expectations in its third-quarter earnings report. The big elephant in the room was the personal computing industry, which has largely collapsed thanks to AI causing prices to skyrocket, suppressing consumer demand. Compounding its PC market woes are supply side production problems, as CNBC points out.
Investors are now divided on whether it’s time to buy the dip or wait it out as the stock swings drag on. Intel isn’t alone in feeling the hurt, with Google parent company Alphabet incurring massive losses and wiping out over half a trillion dollars in market value last week.
Zooming out, Big Tech is navigating a major point of reckoning as investors continue to ask hard questions about its ability to keep the party going and sustain its massive data center investments.
With existing supply woes, Intel is trapped between a rock and a hard place: either pursue a declining PC sector or make a major pivot to data center-friendly server processors, neither of which are a guarantee of future success.
Meanwhile, US taxpayers are along for the ride as the value of the Trump administration’s major investments in Intel continue to fluctuate wildly.
More on the AI industry: Investors Are Getting Palpably Nervous About the AI Industry’s Financial Situation
