Apple will be working with Intel to design and build its chips in the USA, confirms President Donald Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump dropped a late-night Truth Social post on June 18, confirming that Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its chips in America.

"I decided to help Intel because we need to design and build our Chips right here in America."

- said President Trump on Truth Social

There's just one small detail he left out: Intel didn't know the announcement was coming.

According to Rohan Goswami of Semafor, Intel's own executives were among those caught off guard by Trump's post. The two companies have indeed been in talks for months, but the status of those negotiations remains unclear. Neither Apple nor Intel commented publicly after the announcement. So it looks like Trump essentially announced a deal that the companies involved weren't ready to confirm. Classic.

The announcement came just two days after Intel confirmed its 18A-P process node had entered risk production, announced at the VLSI Symposium in Honolulu. The node delivers 9% higher performance at the same power, or 18% lower power at identical performance compared to the base 18A process, and remains design-rule compatible with 18A, so customers can reuse existing IP.

As we've previously covered at TweakTown, this relationship has been building for a while. Reports suggest Apple's M7 SoC is slated to be the first high-volume chip manufactured on 18A-P, targeting MacBook, iMac, and iPad volumes in the 15-20 million unit range annually by late 2027, with a separate Apple mobile SoC potentially following on Intel's future 14A node by 2028.

To be clear about the technical scope here: this is purely a foundry deal. Apple still designs its own silicon, and Intel would act strictly as a contract manufacturer. It wouldn't return Apple to Intel-designed processors and certainly wouldn't displace TSMC from Apple's flagship products.

To understand why Apple is choosing to partner with Intel, we must look at the manufacturing landscape. Worldwide demand for AI processors has led Apple to lose its position as TSMC's largest customer to NVIDIA, with chip shortages believed to have contributed to delays for both the M5 Mac Studio and the touchscreen MacBook Pro. Apple needs a second source, and Intel needs a marquee customer to validate its foundry comeback.

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Intel's stock spiked more than 9% in premarket trading following Trump's post. The US government, which holds roughly a 10% stake in Intel, also benefits directly from the company's rising valuation, which gives Trump a personal scorecard incentive to keep pushing these announcements. Whether or not the contracts are signed yet is apparently a secondary concern. We await the official word from Apple and Intel on the matter.