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- Apple and Intel have reached a preliminary chip manufacturing agreement after more than a year of negotiations, according to the Wall Street Journal.
- Intel stock reached an intraday high of $130.57 on May 8, 2026, surpassing the dot-com era peak of $74.88 in August 2000 by approximately 74%.
- President Trump personally pressured Tim Cook to conclude the deal, while the US government owns approximately 10% of Intel shares, which were purchased at a price of $20.47 per share.
Intel and Apple have reached a tentative agreement that Intel will manufacture some of the chips that power Apple devices, the Wall Street Journal reports. I mentioned Friday. Talks between the two companies have been ongoing for more than a year.
The markets did not wait for the exact details. Intel stock jumped more than 13% on Friday, hitting an intraday high of $130.57, surpassing the company’s dot-com-era closing high of $75.81, which dates back to 2000, by about 72%. For context: 365 days ago, Intel was trading near its 52-week low of $18.96.
It’s still unclear what products Intel will make for Apple, but Apple ships more than 200 million iPhones a year in addition to millions of iPads and Macs. This comes at an opportune time for Intel, as Nvidia and AMD have been steadily grabbing market share.
Apple currently relies almost entirely on TSMC for its chips. Intel may focus on low-volume products first and provide some diversification for Apple.
The White House played a direct role in completing the deal. President Trump personally defended Intel to Tim Cook in a meeting at the White House. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also participated in the outreach. With this deal, Intel may get a big boost to its business (as the charts show), and the Trump administration may score a political victory after loudly emphasizing the importance of domestic chip manufacturing in the United States. Apple’s participation, in turn, could help polish its relationship with the Trump administration.
The government has a very personal reason to care. Last August in the United States acquired A 9.9% stake in Intel through the purchase of 433.3 million shares at $20.47 per share – a total of $8.9 billion funded through the CHIPS Act, Science and Secure Semiconductor programs, According to Intel’s SEC filings. With Intel now trading at over $120, this position has swelled to over $50 billion in value. Trump took to Truth Social last week to claim credit for “making the United States of America over $30 billion.”
Intel’s turnaround story has had a lot of moving parts. The government share was followed by A Panther Lake slide launch— Intel’s first product in the 18A advanced manufacturing process — then a $5 billion investment from Nvidia and a $2 billion injection from SoftBank. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took over in March 2025 after years of Intel losing market share to AMD, Nvidia and Apple Silicon, has been looking for partners and customers ever since.
AMD has been a relentless pressure point. like Decryption Reported last OctoberAMD secured a massive 6GW GPU deal with OpenAI – a deal that included OpenAI acquiring up to 10% of AMD shares. That was AMD staking its claim on AI infrastructure. Intel, by contrast, was betting on its foundry customers. Now you may have landed the biggest one imaginable.
The first Intel-manufactured Apple chips, if the timeline holds, will be about 18 months away.
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