SoftBank will invest $2 billion in Intel, taking roughly a 2% stake at $23 per share and becoming one of Intels largest shareholders. It is a financial vote of confidence in a company trying to reestablish process leadership, scale a foundry business, and convince marquee customers to commit to external wafer orders. SoftBank has been assembling an AI supply-chain franchise that spans IP, compute, and infrastructure. It owns Arm, agreed to acquire Arm server CPU designer Ampere Computing, injected massive capital into OpenAI, and aligned with Oracle under the Stargate hyperscale AI initiative backed by the current U.S. administration.