The Biden administration is in talks to award more than US$10-billion in subsidies to Intel, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Negotiations are under way, and Intel’s award package will likely include both loans and direct grants, according to the report.

The US department of commerce, which oversees the disbursement of Chips Act funds, and Intel declined to comment.

The department has already announced two smaller Chips Act grants and US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo said earlier this month that her department planned to make several funding awards within two months from the government’s $39-billion programme to boost semiconductor manufacturing.

The semiconductor fund is intended to subsidise chip production and related supply-chain investments, and the awards will help build factories and increase production.

Intel plans to spend tens of billions of dollars to fund chip factories at longtime sites in Arizona and New Mexico, along with a new site in Ohio that the Silicon Valley company says could become the world’s largest chip plant.

Federal dollars

But the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Intel planned to delay completion of the Ohio site until 2026 due to a slowdown in the chip market and a slow roll-out of federal dollars.

It remains unclear whether a wave of federal dollars this year would speed those plans back up, or the plans of TSMC, which has also applied for US funding and whose chip factory under construction in Arizona has been delayed.