Washington Has a Stock Portfolio Now, and It Keeps Buying

On October 14, GlobalFoundries announced that Japan will put up to $21 billion into two new chip fabs at its Malta, New York site, and that under a separate agreement the U.S. Department of Commerce will receive roughly 4% of the company.¹ The headline was about Japanese money. The quieter line was the one about Washington's share.

That stake lifts the government's total position in GlobalFoundries to about 7%, and President Trump wrote on Truth Social that the deal “brings our total Investments to 1.63 Billion Dollars.”² A week later a Cato Institute analyst counted 40 private companies in which the administration has announced or completed ownership stakes, with four more proposed by the Commerce Department in that week alone.³ Even the Federal Aviation Administration now has a term sheet for an equity stake in Air Space Intelligence, the contractor building its new air traffic management platform under a 12-year contract worth up to $875 million.⁴

The United States government has become one of the most active buyers of corporate equity in the country. It did not start that way, and the story of how it got here matters to anyone trying to guess what it buys next.

Sixteen months, from one veto to forty companies

The first move was not really a purchase. On June 18, 2025, the government took a “golden share” in U.S. Steel as a condition of its sale to Nippon Steel.⁵ In July it spent $400 million on MP Materials stock, which made the U.S. government the company's largest owner.⁶

Then came Intel. On August 22, 2025, the administration took a 9.9% stake,⁵ converting a 2022 CHIPS Act grant into about $8.9 billion of equity, with no seat on the board.⁷ By February of this year a CSIS analysis put the total committed to equity stakes at about $10 billion, most of it Intel.⁷

The fall of 2025 brought the miners. On October 1 Lithium Americas said the Energy Department would take 5% of the company and 5% of its Thacker Pass project alongside a roughly $2.3 billion loan.⁶ Six days later Washington paid $35.6 million for 10% of Trilogy Metals, plus warrants for another 7.5%, while ordering permits for the road to Alaska's Ambler mining district. Trilogy closed up 211% that day.⁸

✓ Trusted partner One research team says it tracks every one of these government positions and has identified the company it believes Washington is likely to buy into next →

By late July the count had reached 30 deals worth roughly $26.7 billion, spread across the Commerce, Defense and Energy departments and the Development Finance Corporation, with no single ledger that lists them all.⁹ In late July Commerce announced seven more letters of intent, $874 million in CHIPS incentives to firms including GlobalFoundries, Kepler and Multibeam, each carrying “a minority, non-controlling equity stake.”¹⁰

The Intel trade

Intel is the position that turned a policy experiment into something that looks like a portfolio. The terms: a warrant and common stock agreement covering 433.3 million shares at $20.47 each, about two-thirds delivered at closing and the rest held in escrow against Pentagon chip program milestones.⁹

By early June the stock traded at $120.89.⁵ In late July, Fortune valued the stake at $42 billion, up from $8.9 billion, and quoted National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett calling the stakes “like a down payment on a sovereign wealth fund, which many countries have.”⁹

The gain has since shrunk. Intel closed at $91.69 on October 20,¹¹ and the Cato analyst wrote on October 23 that selling the entire stake today would net roughly $28 billion.³ That is still about three times the purchase price. It is also a reminder that a government stake is a stock, and stocks go both ways.

Not every pick has worked

The pattern on announcement day is consistent. MP Materials rose 50% the day the Pentagon became its largest shareholder. Lithium Americas gapped up 23.3%. When Commerce signaled $2 billion in quantum computing grants with equity attached on May 21, IBM rose 12.4% and D-Wave, Rigetti and Infleqtion jumped 33%, 30.5% and 31.5%.⁵

What happens after is less consistent. MP Materials peaked at $100.25 last October and was back at $64.23 by June. Lithium Americas hit $10.51 in mid-October 2025 and traded at $5.05 by June. USA Rare Earth, where the government took 10% in January, reached $32.07 after the $12 billion minerals stockpile was announced on February 2 and sat at $28.19 four months later. L3Harris, which took a $1 billion Pentagon investment in its rocket motor business in January, was lower by June.⁵ A government stake is not a guarantee. It is a signal about where federal money and federal attention are going.

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There is also a political clock on this. A July CNBC poll found 49% of voters consider government stakes in U.S. companies inappropriate, and an Intel shareholder suit is challenging the legal basis for equity demands tied to CHIPS funding. If Democrats win Congress in next week's midterms, efforts to unwind or restrict the stakes become a realistic scenario.¹²

Where the money is going next

Look at the list and the sectors sort themselves: chips, critical minerals, nuclear, quantum computing, rocket motors,¹³ and now air traffic software.⁴ The people closest to the program say more is coming. Jonathan Hillman, who keeps the Council on Foreign Relations tracker, told Fortune that “the deals that have been announced to date are only the tip of the iceberg.”⁹

For an investor, that creates an unusual situation. The largest, most price-insensitive buyer in the market is publishing its purchases one press release at a time, and the stocks it buys tend to move the day the news lands. The hard part is being there before the release, not after.

The largest, most price-insensitive buyer in the market is publishing its purchases one press release at a time, and the stocks it buys tend to move the day the news lands.

The clues are not hidden. The government has bought where it has a grant program to convert, where a supply chain runs through China, and where a contractor it depends on needs capital. GlobalFoundries had a proposed stake attached to CHIPS awards in May,¹³ was in Commerce’s July batch of equity-linked letters of intent,¹⁰ and got the 4% in October.¹ Repeat customers are a pattern too.

The risks are real. Announcement-day gains have faded in more than one name, the legal footing is being tested in court, and a change of control in Congress could freeze the program.¹² The Intel stake is worth about a third less than it was in July.^9, 3 Nobody should buy a stock only because Washington did.

But the direction is not in doubt. Sixteen months ago the federal government owned a veto over one steel company. Today it holds pieces of forty, its biggest position has turned $8.9 billion into roughly $28 billion, and its own economic adviser calls the whole thing a down payment on a sovereign wealth fund. Washington is an investor now. The next question is which company it calls next.