President Donald Trump said on June 18, 2026 that Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build chips in the United States, sending Intel's stock up 10.5% in a single session and reframing the U.S. government's stake in the struggling chipmaker as a multi-billion-dollar paper gain.
A deal announced by post, not press release
Trump revealed the arrangement on Truth Social, writing that Apple had "agreed to work with Intel to design and build its Chips in America." Notably, neither company has formally confirmed the agreement: Intel declined to comment on "a potential Apple-Intel agreement," and Apple did not respond to requests. According to reporting, some Intel executives learned of the announcement through the post itself rather than internal channels.
The foundation is not new, however. A preliminary agreement was reported in May 2026 after more than a year of talks, and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Intel has already begun small-scale testing of Apple chips on its 18A-P process node.
Why Intel starts with lower-end chips
For now, Intel's role is bounded by physics. Independent analysis pegs Intel's 18A node at roughly 238 million transistors per square millimeter versus about 313 million for TSMC's competing N2 - a density gap that keeps Apple's flagship A-series and M-series silicon at TSMC. Intel's initial work will focus on legacy and lower-end processors, with first shipments estimated for the second or third quarter of 2027 and TSMC still expected to supply over 90% of Apple's volume.
Intel said at the VLSI Symposium on June 16 that it had begun risk production of the 18A-P node, which delivers about 9% higher performance at the same power as the base 18A. Initial yield targets sit at a modest 50-60%.
A government-backed foundry comeback
Landing Apple would be the strongest external validation yet for Intel Foundry, which has been rebuilding credibility under CEO Lip-Bu Tan after years of manufacturing delays. The win follows other recent foundry momentum, including Google's order for 3 million Intel-made TPUs. The U.S. government's August 2025 conversion of $8.9 billion in CHIPS Act grants into a 9.9% Intel equity stake now sits on a paper value Trump pegged above $60 billion.
For Apple - which recently flagged supply constraints amid surging AI demand - the partnership is a strategic hedge against single-source reliance on TSMC and a contingency against Taiwan-related supply risk, even as advanced production stays with TSMC for years to come.
Reporting based on coverage from Tech Times, CNBC, Semafor and Tom's Hardware.