Japan's Warren Buffett announces huge stake in struggling US firm… and stock skyrockets
His company, SoftBank, is pumping $2 billion into the struggling US chipmaker in a move that immediately sent Intel shares higher.
When the news broke Monday night, shares jumped five percent in after hours trading and this morning were up by as much as eight percent.
The investment makes SoftBank one of Intel's biggest shareholders and highlights Son's latest push into artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
He has already backed major projects including a $500 billion data center plan in the United States.
Intel, once the undisputed leader in chips, has been losing ground for years to rivals like Taiwan's TSMC.
The move follows reports that Washington may take a stake in Intel as part of a broader push to stabilize US chipmaking.
It emerged yesterday that the Trump administration weighing an unprecedented move: taking a 10 percent stake in Intel.
The roughly $10.5 billion investment would mean the US becoming the troubled chipmaker's biggest shareholder. Shares had fallen on that news.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said any government investment would likely come through a conversion of CHIPS Act grants, rather than a direct push to buy Intel products.
The move, part of Trump's unusual approach to national security, comes two weeks after the President demanded the resignation of CEO Lip-Bu Tan in a fiery post on Truth Social.
Tan, who took the helm just over six months ago, has been tasked with reviving the struggling company.
While the government has sometimes taken temporary stakes during crises — such as the 2008 financial bailout — a similar move in peacetime for a tech giant would be virtually unprecedented.
SoftBank's purchase price of $23 a share represents a small discount to Monday's close of $23.66. Tuesday they were trading at between $25.50 and $26.50. The investment will give the Japanese firm an equity stake of just under 2 percent, making it Intel's sixth-largest shareholder.
Meanwhile, Intel is slashing 25,000 jobs this year as it battles to turn around its flagging fortunes.
The chip making giant — which makes processors that power millions of Dell, HP, and Lenovo computers — will shrink its workforce from about 99,500 to 75,000 by the end of 2025.
The confirmation in July of the the scale of the layoffs, first announced in April, came as Intel updated Wall Street on its earnings over the past three months. It posted a loss of $2.9 billion.
Bosses said Intel has slashed 15,000 jobs so far this year — suggesting another 10,000 are set to go.
These are the second major round of job cuts at Intel in the past two years. In December, the company ousted its CEO while cutting 15 percent of its workforce in 2024.
Intel, once one of Silicon Valley's most profitable companies, rose to prominence in the 1990s on the strength of its microprocessor chips — the 'brains' of personal computers.
But it missed the smartphone boom and has struggled to cash in on the surging demand for AI chips.
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