White House's Hassett says US could take stakes in other chip companies

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The federal government could take stakes in other U.S. semiconductor companies or even move to other industries, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNBC in an interview on Monday following its stake in Intel.    

Hassett, asked if the Intel deal was the start of a larger effort by the U.S. government to take equity stakes in other industries that it subsidizes, or other companies in the AI and chip space that are subsidized such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, said there could be other similar transactions.

"I think this is a very, very special circumstance because of the massive amount of CHIPS Act spending that was coming Intel's way," the National Economic Council director told CNBC.

"But the president has made it clear all the way back to the campaign that he thinks that, in the end, it would be great if the U.S. could start to build up a sovereign wealth fund. And so I'm sure that at some point there'll be more transactions, if not in this industry in other industries," Hassett said.

The Intel investment marks the latest unusual deal with U.S. companies that has worried critics, who say Trump's actions create new categories of corporate risk.

Under Trump, the U.S. government has allowed AI chip giant Nvidia to sell its H20 chips to China, allowed the Pentagon to become the largest shareholder in mining company MP Materials and acquired a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of Japan's Nippon Steel purchase of U.S. Steel.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Toby Chopra and Louise Heavens)