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U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

(www.cnbc.com)
607 points givemeethekeys | 8 comments | 22 Aug 25 21:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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jjcm ◴[22 Aug 25 22:36 UTC] No.44990743[source]▶
In general I would rather the government take a stake in corporations they're bailing out. I think the "too big to fail" bailouts in the past should have come with more of a cost for the business, so on one hand I'm glad this is finally happening.

On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process rather than this politicized "our president made a deal to save america!" / "Intel is back and the government is investing BUY INTEL SHARES" media event. These things should follow a strict set of rules and processes so investors and companies know what to expect. These kind of deals should be boring, not a media event.

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ch4s3 ◴[22 Aug 25 23:08 UTC] No.44991032[source]▶
I’d really rather we didn’t bail out these companies at all. It clearly creates moral hazard and makes it hard for better run companies to enter markets.
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JustExAWS ◴[22 Aug 25 23:13 UTC] No.44991093[source]▶
Chip manufacturing is too important for the US. We can’t be completely dependent on Taiwan. Nothing against Taiwan, it’s one attack away from being obliterated by China.

No company is going to come out of someone’s garage and build a chip fab.

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andrewflnr ◴[22 Aug 25 23:40 UTC] No.44991294[source]▶
"Someone's garage" is a straw man. There must be people here who could, with adequate funding, build a smallish but viable chip manufacturing company.
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tjwebbnorfolk ◴[22 Aug 25 23:58 UTC] No.44991475[source]▶
It is not a straw man.

There is no amount of scrappy cleverness that gets you from zero to manufacturing cutting-edge chips without shitloads of capital investment, years/decades of R&D, a huge manufacturing workforce, and big contracts.

There's no such thing as starting small and scaling in that business.

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1. andrewflnr ◴[23 Aug 25 02:26 UTC] No.44992496[source]▶
You don't think $8.9B would do it?
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2. mdorazio ◴[23 Aug 25 03:20 UTC] No.44992818[source]▶
TSMC has already put $65B into the Phoenix fab and is adding at least that much more, so no. You're off by an order of magnitude.
3. rchiang ◴[23 Aug 25 03:23 UTC] No.44992840[source]▶
TSMC's estimated costs in 2020, were $12 billion for their first fab. In 2025, their updated estimates were $65 billion for the first three fabs and $165 billion for when they get to six such facilities. So, $8.9B is a lot of money, but isn't anywhere close to getting to the equivalent to what TSMC has in Taiwan.
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4. andrewflnr ◴[23 Aug 25 03:27 UTC] No.44992861[source]▶
> getting to the equivalent to what TSMC has in Taiwan

That wasn't the question. The question, at least for me, is can you build non-zero chip production, enough to start building out a sustainable business. Obviously you're not going to compete with TSMC on day one, but there's a wide spectrum between that and "garage".

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5. beart ◴[23 Aug 25 03:33 UTC] No.44992902[source]▶
This link contains a graph of fab costs over time. It looks like 9 billion might get you a cutting edge fab 15-20 years ago. but that's just the fab.

https://semiwiki.com/forum/threads/how-to-build-a-20-billion...

6. thorncorona ◴[23 Aug 25 05:05 UTC] No.44993331{3}[source]▶
China tried to do it, and they aren’t even close despite their massive state subsidy programs, so no.
7. IshKebab ◴[23 Aug 25 09:17 UTC] No.44994580{3}[source]▶
How would you build a sustainable business based on old processes though? The only reason fabs exist that use old processes is because they were once new processes, and once they've been built you may as well keep them running for a while. Building a new 50 nm fab would never be viable.
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8. andrewflnr ◴[23 Aug 25 15:48 UTC] No.44996802{4}[source]▶
Those old fabs are still able to be useful at all because most applications don't need cutting edge chips. Chips have been Good Enough for decades. And again, if the goal actually is manufacturing independence, buying local chips that are a bit more expensive is totally worth it.