{"id":39927,"date":"2025-12-02T06:21:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T06:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/the-us-is-taking-a-stake-in-a-chip-startup-led-by-intels-ousted-ceo\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T06:21:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T06:21:26","slug":"the-us-is-taking-a-stake-in-a-chip-startup-led-by-intels-ousted-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/the-us-is-taking-a-stake-in-a-chip-startup-led-by-intels-ousted-ceo\/","title":{"rendered":"The US is taking a stake in a chip startup led by Intel&#8217;s ousted CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/692e6c627ecd1d1da662bd4d?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Pat Gelsinger\"\/><figcaption>The US is taking an equity stake in a chip startup led by Intel&#039;s former CEO Pat Gelsinger as it tries to reclaim leadership in the semiconductor race.<\/p>\n<p>I-HWA CHENG\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>The US government has signed a nonbinding letter of intent to invest up to $150 million in a chip startup.<\/li>\n<li>xLight is chaired by Pat Gelsinger, who ran Intel until his resignation late last year.<\/li>\n<li>The deal signals Washington&#039;s effort to regain leadership in chipmaking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The US government is poised to become a shareholder in a semiconductor startup chaired by Pat Gelsinger, who ran Intel until his resignation last year.<\/p>\n<p>The Commerce Department said on Monday that the Trump administration signed a nonbinding letter of intent to invest up to $150 million in xLight, a startup trying to build a more advanced and cost-effective way to manufacture chips.<\/p>\n<p>The investment would come from the CHIPS and Science Act and would be structured as equity, giving the federal government direct ownership in the company.<\/p>\n<p>The deal \u2014 a first from the Trump administration&#039;s CHIPS Research and Development Office \u2014 signals Washington&#039;s effort to regain leadership in chipmaking. Most advanced semiconductors are manufactured outside the US, led by TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung in South Korea \u2014 areas where China&#039;s influence looms large.<\/p>\n<p>Intel warned in July that it may halt development of its next-generation chip, 14A, due to financial reasons. If Intel gives up on 14A, this could be a death blow to US chip manufacturing, Business Insider&#039;s Alistair Barr wrote in a July report.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;For far too long, America ceded the frontier of advanced lithography to others. Under President Trump, those days are over,&quot; said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in Monday&#039;s press release.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;This partnership would back a technology that can fundamentally rewrite the limits of chipmaking. Best of all, we would be doing it here at home,&quot; Lutnick added.<\/p>\n<p>The Palo Alto-based startup, founded in 2021, is developing free-electron laser technology, &quot;an alternative light source&quot; for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines that power cutting-edge chip production, the press release said.<\/p>\n<p>xLight said on its website that its systems would enhance Dutch firm ASML&#039;s machines, &quot;the undisputed global leader in EUV lithography systems.&quot; EUV systems are only produced by ASML. xLight&#039;s technology will &quot;transform semiconductor fab capabilities and dramatically reduce capital and operating expenses,&quot; it added.<\/p>\n<p>Pat Gelsinger, who was pushed out as Intel CEO late last year after the company struggled with weak earnings and fell behind in the AI chip race, became xLight&#039;s executive chairman in March. He is also a general partner at Playground Global, the venture firm that led xLight&#039;s $40 million Series B round in July.<\/p>\n<p>Gelsinger, who was CEO of Intel from 2021 to 2024, said in an interview with CNBC&#039;s &quot;Squawk Box&quot; in October that Intel &quot;made a set of bad decisions over 15 years&quot; and that technical leadership wasn&#039;t &quot;led by technologists for many years.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We were late on AI as well,&quot; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Gelsinger spent decades rising through the ranks at Intel and became one of the most influential voices behind the 2022 CHIPS Act, a landmark manufacturing legislation that reshaped America&#039;s chip strategy.<\/p>\n<p>xLight has the potential to &quot;drive the next era of Moore&#039;s Law, accelerating fab productivity, while developing a critical domestic capability,&quot; said Gelsinger in a Monday press release.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US is taking an equity stake in a chip startup led by Intel&#039;s former CEO Pat Gelsinger as it tries to reclaim leadership in the semiconductor race. I-HWA CHENG\/AFP via Getty Images The US government has signed a nonbinding letter of intent to invest up to $150 million in a chip startup. xLight is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-39927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}