Softbank owns a majority stake in Arm. Arm-based chips dominate the smartphone market, and they're starting to compete with Intel in PCs and servers as well. Arm doesn't sell chips directly, instead licensing its designs and intellectual property to companies including Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and many others.

The move could be seen as a vote of confidence for Intel, which has been playing catch-up in an industry that has chased the artificial intelligence boom.

A $2 billion investment represents a roughly 2% stake, ranking SoftBank the fifth-largest shareholder of Intel, while a reported 10% stake by the U.S. would be worth about $10.4 billion as of Monday’s share price.