This is not the first time the idea has been mooted. And the source here is either about as authoritative as it gets or as unreliable as humanly possible, depending on how you look at it. But President Trump says that Apple has agreed to make chips with Intel in the USA.
Specifically, in a Truth social post Trump said, “First, we helped bring in Nvidia, and they agreed to build their first level Chips with Intel. Next, Elon agreed to build his TerraFab, the largest Chip Factory in the World, designed together with Intel’s Technology team. And, finally, Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its Chips in America.”
It should be said that there is, as yet, no official confirmation of any of this from the companies concerned. Indeed, that includes not only Trump’s claim that Apple has agreed to make chips with Intel, but also with Nvidia.
Nvidia and Intel are very much on-the-record about a collaboration. But thus far, that’s about combining Intel CPUs with Nvidia GPUs. Exactly how those chips get made hasn’t been detailed. Nor, inevitably, are there any specifics regarding chips Intel might make for Apple.
That said, there have been rumours for some time that Apple could use Intel’s fabs to make certain chips. Much of the coverage suggests that Apple could choose Intel to make lower-cost chips, perhaps for mainstream iPhone and MacBook models, while the really high-performance, cutting-edge stuff for Pro models remains at TSMC.
Almost any deal with Apple would clearly be a huge win for Intel and its nascent customer fab business. Unsurprisingly, Intel’s stock price leapt up 7% following Trump’s announcement on Truth Social.
Equally unsurprisingly, Trump called out Intel’s stock price gains of late, saying, “We decided to help Intel in exchange for 10% of their shares. Is that too much or, too little? They were worth around 100 Billion Dollars when we made our offer. Now they are worth over 600 BILLION DOLLARS! Nine months, and they’ve increased in value over HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS. America’s stake is now over 60 Billion Dollars. When was the last time a President made America money?”
For now it’s unclear what, if anything, Intel and Apple have agreed. If there is an agreement, it will no doubt be years before the first Apple chips flow from Intel’s fabs. Any deal may well be contingent on the performance—or yields—of Intel’s new 18A and 14A nodes. If it’s not good enough, Apple may have an exit written into the deal.
So there may be a deal. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that there will definitely be chips. As ever, watch this space.