Intel's CEO was once targeted by Trump over ties to China — now its stock has hit record highs. How he pulled it off

Chris Morris

4 min read

It was August 7, 2025 when Donald Trump took to Truth Social to blast Intel and its CEO.

“The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately,” he wrote. (1) “There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!”

Must Read

Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now become a landlord for as little as $100 — and no, you don’t have to deal with tenants or fix freezers. Here’s how
Robert Kiyosaki says this 1 asset will surge 400% in a year and begs investors not to miss this ‘explosion’
Dave Ramsey warns nearly 50% of Americans are making 1 big Social Security mistake — here’s how to fix it ASAP

The company’s stock, at the time, was trading for about $20. (2) Today, shares are more than quadruple that, hitting record highs last week. (3) Last Friday, the company’s stock had its best day since 1987, climbing 24%. (4)

It’s the corporate comeback of the year.

Analysts are coming around to the company, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan is being heralded as a hero in tech spaces. (5)

Here’s how he did it.

Rejecting the premise

Many investors had written Intel off as outdated when Tan came on board. Nvidia had pushed its way to the chip market as the AI revolution got underway.

Still, some shareholders welcomed his arrival.

Shares jumped 10% on the news that Tan was taking the top office. He was seen as eminently qualified and was the first outsider to ever be named a leader at the company.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), however, questioned Tan’s ties to Chinese companies and raised concerns about a criminal case at Cadence Design, where Tan served as CEO until 2021. That got Trump involved and things began to move fast.

Tan’s first step was to reverse Trump’s thinking, something he handled quickly by a meeting in Washington. Ultimately, he ended up convincing Trump to have the government buy a 10% stake in the company.

That cash infusion was the beginning of a series of events that repositioned Intel.

The company’s processors are now in demand once again (and Intel says it will work with Elon Musk’s and SpaceX’s forthcoming Terafab project). (6) And earnings are up, due to that demand, with revenues climbing 7% over a year ago in its most recent report. (7)

“We are embracing our roots as data driven, paranoid, and engineering driven,” Tan said on the company’s Q1 earnings conference call, referencing Intel cofounder Andy Grove’s famous “only the paranoid survive” philosophy.

Securing additional investors

The government isn’t the only entity investing in Intel these days. Last September, Nvidia made a $5 billion investment in the company, with Intel agreeing to fabricate not only AI chips, but Nvidia’s RTX GPU. (8)

The biggest change Tan has brought to the company, though, was a resurgence in demand for its CPUs. When he came on board, the GPU was the chip of choice, but today Intel is supply constrained as companies clamor for its product.

“In recent months we have seen clear signs that the CPU is reasserting itself as the indispensable foundation of the AI era,” Tan said on the call.

While this growth is occurring, Tan is also resisting the urge to spend. He said on the earnings call that the company will not commit to building factories using its 14A fabrication process (its most advanced) unless it has committed customers.

There’s still plenty of room to climb, as evidenced by the stock prices of Nvidia and other leading AI chipmakers, but Intel has shaken off many of its doubters and won back investors.

Their biggest question now is: What’s next?

Intel’s CEO was once targeted by Trump over ties to China — now its stock has hit record highs. How he pulled it off

Must Read

Rejecting the premise

Securing additional investors

You May Also Like

Article Sources