Talks for an undisclosed stake come days after President Donald Trump called for Intel’s CEO to resign. The administration of United States President Donald Trump is in talks with Intel to have the US government potentially take a stake in the chipmaker. Intel’s shares surged more than 7 percent in regular trading and then another 2.6 percent after the bell on Thursday, following Bloomberg News’ initial report of the potential deal, which cited people familiar with the plan. It is unclear what size stake the federal government will take, but Bloomberg reports that the deal will help “shore up” a planned factory in Ohio that has been delayed. The plan stems from a meeting this week between Trump and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the report said. Tan also met Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “The meeting was a very interesting one,” Trump said on Truth Social on Monday, adding that his cabinet members and Tan are going to spend time together and bring suggestions to him during the next week. The meeting came after Trump publicly demanded the resignation of Tan over his past investments in Chinese tech companies, some linked to the Chinese military. Intel declined to comment on the report but said it was deeply committed to supporting Trump’s efforts to strengthen US technology and manufacturing leadership. “Discussion about hypothetical deals should be regarded as speculation unless officially announced by the administration,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai. The details of the stake and price are still being discussed, according to the report. Any agreement and potential cash infusion will help the years-long efforts to turn around the company’s fortunes. Once the undisputed leader in chip manufacturing, Intel has lost its position in recent years. The chipmaker’s stock market value has plummeted to $104bn from $288bn in 2020. Intel’s profit margins – once the envy of the industry – are also at about half their historical highs. Tan has been tasked to undo years of missteps that left Intel struggling to make inroads in the booming AI chip industry dominated by Nvidia, while investment-heavy contract manufacturing ambitions led to heavy losses. Any agreement would likely help Intel build out its planned chip complex in Ohio, Bloomberg reported. Intel’s planned $28bn chip fabrication plants in Ohio have been delayed, with the first unit now slated for completion in 2030 and operations to begin between 2030 and 2031, pushing the timeline back by at least five years. Taking a stake in Intel would mark the latest move by Trump, a Republican, to deepen the government’s involvement in the US chip industry, seen as a vital security interest to the country. Earlier this week, Trump made a deal with Nvidia to pay the US government a cut of its sales in exchange for resuming exports of banned AI chips to China. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

The US president’s words come on the eve of his closely watched Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. One day before the leaders of Russia and the United States are set to meet in the US state of Alaska to discuss ending the Russia-Ukraine war, US President Donald Trump said he believes his Russian counterpart is ready “to make a deal”. In an interview on Fox News Radio on Thursday, Trump said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin “wanted the whole thing” – in an apparent reference to his territorial aspirations in Ukraine – but was willing to come to the table and make a deal due to the relationship between the two men. “I think he wants to get it done. I really feel he wanted the whole thing. I think if it weren’t me, if it were somebody else, he would not be talking to anybody,” Trump told interviewer Brian Kilmeade. Trump and Putin will meet in Alaska on Friday for talks on the more than three-year conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not be present at the talks, though Trump has said that should Putin signal a willingness to end the war, another meeting between the two leaders would follow. “I don’t know that we’re going to get an immediate ceasefire, but I think it’s going to come. See, I’m more interested in an immediate peace deal – getting peace fast. And depending on what happens with my meeting, I’m going to be calling up President Zelenskyy and [saying] let’s get him over to wherever we’re going to meet,” Trump said. He added that there was the possibility they could simply “stay in Alaska”, but also stressed that if the meeting went poorly, “I’m not calling anyone. I’m going home.” That hedging represents a seeming cautiousness by Trump, who has spoken about being frustrated by Putin’s broken promises in the past. Speaking from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi said Trump’s metric for success could be boiled down to what read he had on Putin. “He very much made it clear that what success means in this context is him being convinced that Vladimir Putin is serious about peace, and then arranging a second meeting that would involve the Ukrainians,” he said. Earlier on Thursday, Putin praised Trump, saying he was “making quite energetic and sincere efforts to end the fighting”. The words came shortly after Zelenskyy met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London, where they discussed security guarantees for Ukraine that could “make peace truly durable if the United States succeeds in pressing Russia to stop the killings and engage in genuine, substantive diplomacy”, Zelenskyy wrote on X. The meeting, said Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, “was about a show of unity ahead of that summit in Alaska”. Hull noted there was a “sense of some optimism” following the Wednesday call between Trump, Zelenskyy and European leaders. “[Trump] took a somewhat stronger line against Putin than was expected, saying the Russian president faced severe consequences if he didn’t meaningfully engage in ceasefire talks,” he noted.   Follow Al Jazeera English:...