*

U.S. wants company equity in exchange for billions of

dollars of

CHIPS Act grants

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Besides Intel ( INTC ), Micron, TSMC and Samsung were biggest CHIPS

Act

recipients

*

Lutnick leading the process with Bessent also involved

By Nandita Bose and Max A. Cherney

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary

Howard Lutnick is looking into the federal government taking

equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that receive CHIPS

Act funding to build factories in the country, two sources said.

Expanding on a plan to receive an equity stake in Intel ( INTC )

in exchange for cash grants, a White House official and

a person familiar with the situation said Lutnick is exploring

how the U.S. can receive equity stakes in exchange for CHIPS Act

funding for companies such as Micron, Taiwan

Semiconductor Manufacturing Co ( TSM ) and Samsung

. Much of the funding has not yet been dispersed.

Aside from Intel ( INTC ), memory chipmaker Micron is the biggest

U.S. recipient of CHIPS Act cash. TSMC declined comment. Micron,

Samsung and the White House did not respond to requests for

comment.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on

Tuesday that Lutnick was working on a deal with Intel ( INTC ) to take a

10% government stake. "The president wants to put America's

needs first, both from a national security and economic

perspective, and it's a creative idea that has never been done

before," she told reporters.

While Lutnick said earlier on CNBC that the U.S. does not

want to tell Intel ( INTC ) how to run its operations, any investment

would be unprecedented and ramps up a new era of U.S. influence

on the big companies. In the past, the U.S. has taken stakes in

companies to provide cash and build confidence in times of

economic upheaval and uncertainty.

In a similar move earlier this year, Trump approved Nippon

Steel's ( NISTF ) purchase of U.S. Steel after being promised a

"golden share" that would prevent the companies from reducing or

delaying promised investments, transferring production or jobs

outside the U.S., or closing or idling plants before certain

time frames, without the president's consent.

The two sources said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is

also involved in the CHIPS Act discussions, but that Lutnick is

driving the process. The Commerce Department oversees the $52.7

billion CHIPS Act, formally known as the CHIPS and Science Act.

The act provides funding for research and grants for building

chip plants in the U.S.

Lutnick has been pushing the equity idea, the sources said,

adding that Trump likes the idea.

The U.S. Commerce Department late last year finalized

subsidies of $4.75 billion for Samsung, $6.2 billion for Micron

and $6.6 billion for TSMC to produce semiconductors in the U.S.

In June, Lutnick said the department was re-negotiating some

of former President Joe Biden's grants to semiconductor firms,

calling them "overly generous". He noted at the time that Micron

offered to increase its spending on chip plants in the U.S.