Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 765 posts

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#231

Post by ejstronge »

righthand wrote: post #130

Trying to ignore the politicking on this so it can be clear on what exactly is “happening”. As far as I understand, all Trump did was alter Biden admin’s original plan. Trump swapped a 10% stake in Intel for Biden’s profit sharing for participating in the grants[0] (anyone who participates in the CHIPS Act gets this deal currently, I guess Intel is renegotiating). Not necessarily better or worse because Intel is a lo…

First, this is different because this was not what was agreed when Intel sought the grant. So I reserve the right to see as ‘bad’ a coercive action.

Second, from your article:

‘ Commerce expects "upside sharing will only be material in instances where the project significantly exceeds its projected cash flows or returns, and will not exceed 75% of the recipient’s direct funding award." 'NOT A FREE HANDOUT'

Democratic Senator Jack Reed praised the profit sharing plan, saying chips funding is "not a free handout for multi-billion dollar tech companies.... There is no downside for companies that participate because they only have to share a portion of future profits if they do exceedingly well."’

Clearly, there was a cap on repayments, but there is not one on giving away equity

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#232

Post by actionfromafar »

impossiblefork wrote: post #119
naijaboiler wrote: post #11

i remember when this happened during an actual crisis, in 2008, republicans all over cried on the radio day after day, arguing that it's socialiasm. But now, crickets!!

For me as a vague 1920s maybe-the-SocDems, I see this as vaguely positive. A return to pragmatism from market dogmatism. I see some of the tariff stuff and the US protectionism sort of the same way, although I don't approve, since I think the US uniquely benefits from this kind of thing due to that the dollar is such a predominant reserve currency and since I think it's badly done and will backfire, tarring what in p…

This seems more vaguely 1930s maybe-some-other-ism.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#234

Post by dotancohen »

tyg13 wrote: post #69
heyheyhey wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better rephrasing is "government is giving $8.9B from the CHIPS act in exchange for a 10% stake in the company"

Depends on who you ask. Trump himself seems to think the US is getting 10% for free. I think that's a fair assessment given that these grants were already supposed to be paid out to Intel, without any kind of equity stake promised. Worth noting that Intel is the only company that had these kinds of shenanigans pulled with their grant. Samsung, TSMC, Micron and others were granted similar funds without any kind of wit…

  > Depends on who you ask. Trump himself seems to think the US is getting 10% for free.
I don't think anything is ever free, and I think that Donald Trump the businessman knows that better than I do.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#235

Post by tbrownaw »

chneu wrote: post #164
ac29 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the only chip manufacturer "left" in the US Global Foundries, Micron, and Texas Instruments all come to mind

GF is a few nodes behind. Micron doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot. TI doesn't have the capacity or knowledge to expand to Intel's size/capacity

> doesn't make semiconductors, they mostly make flash and whatnot

Um.

All that stuff is still semiconductors, just with different patterns printed on them.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#236

Post by torginus »

sobiolite wrote: post #91

Ironic, Western politicians thought opening up to trade with China would lead to it adopting a Western model of government. Instead it's lead to the USA adopting the Chinese one.

Yeah, this so weird coming from the US. The US government has a history of writing no-strings-attached blank cheques to people/companies just so avoid the stigma of government control in public companies.

I wonder how the markets will react, will stocks go up because people will assume Intel's going to be a government mandated champion or will they go down because of the negative connotations government control brings?

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#237

Post by righthand »

edot wrote: post #202
righthand wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about the money recovery, the actual concern is about getting the production up and running. This doesn’t really address that in any capacity.

True. I’d probably prefer to see the money go to a better performing company, but since there are like, 2 companies in the US that actually make semiconductors, there isn’t much other than starting a whole new company. Which, for $10B isn’t possible in this industry. So if the money is going to go to Intel, I at least want a cut of it, is my point.

We already got a “cut of it”. This is just redefining the “cut” we get is my point. Either way though you probably won’t ever hear the results of the cut. To get value from this cut the government would have to sell shares worth much more than they are now. You said something about a better company?

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#238

Post by lovich »

wmf wrote: post #33

This is worse than I expected. They're apparently putting in no new money and retroactively demanding stock in exchange for grants that were already awarded. If Intel can't afford to build 14A and we're putting in no net new money... then Intel still can't afford 14A? Unless they were lying.

Or they just devalued all of the current stock holders. Intel needed the capital, not Intel stock

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#239

Post by inerte »

No board seat or governance rights. What's the government getting out of this? Trump brags of a good deal? Might profit in the future? Or _actually_ although technically there's no governance, government might actually influence how Intel is run?

Besides politics and image, are there any benefits?

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#240

Post by dotancohen »

abeppu wrote: post #107
moolcool wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s more about affording 641A

... what would a chip version of 641A even look like? If it involves (a) identifying / filtering stuff they want to spy on (b) sending it back to one of the intelligence agencies, it seems like both would be hard to do well and secretly ... right?

So the US is getting lower-case intel here, in addition to upper-case Intel.
Post reply on HN