President Donald Trump announced on June 18, 2026, that Apple will work with Intel to design and make computer chips in the United States. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Apple and Intel had been negotiating, with the Trump administration helping to set the deal in motion.

Apple and Intel have worked together before. Back in 2019, Apple bought much of Intel's smartphone antenna and wireless chip business, bringing thousands of Intel engineers onto Apple's team. That gave Apple the ability to design its own wireless components and helped the two companies learn how to work together. This new deal extends that partnership into making the main processor chips—the computing cores—that power iPhones and Macs.

Right now, Apple buys almost all its high-performance chips from a company called TSMC in Taiwan. Intel wants to compete for that business. Think of Intel as trying to become a second kitchen that can cook the same recipe as TSMC. That would be a big win for Intel because it has been struggling to attract major customers to its new manufacturing plants in Ohio and Arizona.

Apple is also investing heavily in making things in America. In August 2025, the company pledged $600 billion to U.S. manufacturing, including funding for chip packaging facilities. This Intel deal adds another piece: the actual production of the chips themselves.

The U.S. government strongly wants companies to make advanced chips domestically instead of relying on overseas suppliers, especially Taiwan. Congress passed a law called the CHIPS Act to encourage this. Trump has made bringing chip manufacturing back to America a signature goal, which is why he publicly announced this Apple-Intel deal himself rather than letting it leak out quietly.

Here's what we don't know yet: the announcements do not say exactly which chips Apple will make with Intel, how advanced they need to be, or how many chips Intel will actually produce. Intel's newest manufacturing technology is called Intel 18A, and investors have questions about whether it will work reliably and on schedule. If Apple is betting heavily on that new technology, this deal matters a lot for Intel. If Apple is only making less demanding chips with Intel, it matters less.

For Intel, having Apple as a customer would be a huge endorsement. It would show that the company's new strategy—becoming a manufacturing partner for other chip designers—can actually work. But Intel has disappointed investors before by missing deadlines on new manufacturing technology, so people are skeptical.

For Apple, the benefit is simpler: having a second company that can make its chips reduces the risk of depending entirely on Taiwan. Taiwan is geographically complicated, and that creates business uncertainty. Intel is based in America, which feels safer to Apple's long-term planning. Qualifying Intel to make chips takes engineering work and money, but Apple has the resources.

The announcement is done. The real details—which chips, at what manufacturing level, and how many—have not been released. Those details will tell us whether this is a genuine shift in how Apple gets its chips made or a politically timed announcement without much substance behind it.