Shares of Intel slumped Thursday after President Donald Trump mentioned in a social media put up that the chipmaker’s CEO must resign.
“The CEO of Intel is extremely CONFLICTED and should resign, instantly,” Trump posted on Fact Social. “There isn’t a different answer to this drawback. Thanks on your consideration to this drawback!”
Trump made the put up after Sen. Tom Cotton despatched a letter to Intel Chairman Frank Yeary expressing concern over CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s investments and ties to semiconductor corporations which can be reportedly linked to the Chinese language Communist Celebration and the Individuals’s Liberation Military, and requested the board whether or not Tan had divested his pursuits in these corporations to remove any conflicts of curiosity.
Cotton particularly known as out Tan’s current management of Cadence Design Techniques within the letter. The tech firm admitted in July to promoting its merchandise to China’s Nationwide College of Protection Expertise in violation of U.S. export controls.
“In March 2025, Intel appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO,” Cotton wrote within the letter. “Mr. Tan reportedly controls dozens of Chinese language corporations and has a stake in a whole bunch of Chinese language advanced-manufacturing and chip corporations. Not less than eight of those corporations reportedly have ties to the Chinese language Individuals’s Liberation Military.”
“U.S. corporations who obtain authorities grants needs to be accountable stewards of taxpayer {dollars} and cling to strict safety rules,” Cotton wrote on the social platform X.
Intel had been a beneficiary of the Biden administration’s CHIPS Act, receiving greater than $8 billion in federal funding to construct laptop chip crops across the nation.
Intel didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The calls for made by Trump and Cotton come as financial and political rivalries between the U.S. and China more and more give attention to the competitors over chips, AI and different digital applied sciences that consultants say will form future economies and navy conflicts.
Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has raised issues that Chinese language spies could possibly be working at tech corporations and protection contractors, utilizing their positions to steal secrets and techniques or plant digital backdoors that give China entry to labeled methods and networks.
On Thursday the Arkansas Republican wrote to the Division of Protection urging Protection Secrectary Pete Hegseth to ban all non-U.S. residents from jobs permitting them to entry DoD networks. He has additionally demanded an investigation into Chinese language residents working for protection contractors.
“The U.S. authorities acknowledges that China’s cyber capabilities pose probably the most aggressive and harmful threats to the US, as evidenced by infiltration of our crucial infrastructure, telecommunications networks, and provide chains,” Cotton wrote in an earlier letter calling on the Pentagon to conduct the investigation.
Nationwide safety officers have linked China’s authorities to hacking campaigns focusing on outstanding People and significant U.S. methods.
Shares of the California firm slid 3.5%, whereas markets, notably the tech-heavy Nasdaq, gained floor.
Based in 1968 in the beginning of the PC revolution, Intel missed the technological shift to cellular computing triggered by Apple’s 2007 launch of the iPhone, and it’s lagged extra nimble chipmakers. Intel’s troubles have been magnified for the reason that creation of synthetic intelligence — a booming subject the place the chips made by once-smaller rival Nvidia have change into tech’s hottest commodity.
Intel is shedding hundreds of staff and slicing bills — together with some home semiconductor manufacturing capabilities — as Tan, who took over as CEO in March, tries to revive the fortunes of the struggling chipmaker.
—Michelle Chapman, AP enterprise author
