Comment by oskarkk
3 days ago
Taking a 10% stake in a company is far from nationalization. And the big increase in Intel's stock price happened months after that.
3 days ago
Taking a 10% stake in a company is far from nationalization. And the big increase in Intel's stock price happened months after that.
It is literally partially nationalising though, isn’t it?
This is how the UK government got the banks through the 2008 financial crisis.
They bought the shares on the open market. They didn't seize the company at gunpoint.
No they didn’t. After Trump started making noise about their CEO, Lip-bu Tan, being Chinese they then took the shares at a “…discount to the current market price.”[1]
And the money for this _deal_ was primarily from the CHIPS act funds they were already awarded but had not been sent to them yet
> Of the total, $5.7 billion of the government funds will come from grants under the CHIPS Act that had been awarded but not paid, and $3.2 billion will come from separate government awards under a program to make secure chips.[1]
This was at gunpoint from the government’s monopoly on violence.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/22/intel-goverment-equity-stake...
2 replies →
Why would you think nationalising is a violent process?
As soon as the nation owns enough stock to profit from government decisions (and to compound the influence of those decisions) you essentially have a partially nationalised business.
10% of OpenAI might easily be enough to reach a meaningful "partially nationalised" threshold, once you factor in any holdings in federal pension plans and the active level of government policymaking.
It is very clear Sam Altman wants this, too, because this whole "take 10%" thing in Trump's mind was his idea back in early 2025, and OpenAI have been following up on it recently.
They want the US government to be the bag holder.
So if USgov bought 51% at market value you’d be ok with that?
Time to fire up the printers I guess.
Taking any % is partially nationalizing it and there was no negative capital flight. And 10% is a pretty significant portion.