White House's Hassett says government likely to continue taking stakes in companies similar to Intel deal

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The government’s stake in Intel is part of a broader strategy to create a sovereign wealth fund that could include more companies, White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said Monday.

In a deal that marked a further incursion of federal involvement with private companies, the White House on Friday announced that it was taking a 10% share of the chipmaking giant. The move is worth some $8.9 billion, some of which will come from grant funding associated with the CHIPS Act while the rest will be under separate government allocations for programs associated with making secure chips.

While stressing that the government won’t involve itself in company operations, Hassett said the move is part of a broader strategy.

“Well, I think this is a very, very special circumstance because of the massive amount of chips act spending that was coming in,” Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “But the President has made it clear all the way back to the campaign, he thinks that in the end, it would be great if the U.S. could start to build up a sovereign wealth fund. So I’m sure that at some point there’ll be more transactions, if not in this industry then other industries.