New York, January 13, 2026, 10:26 (EST)
- Intel rose about 5.9% and AMD gained about 5.6% in early trading after KeyBanc upgrades
- KeyBanc said tight data-center supply and rising memory prices are reshaping 2026 chip demand
- Analyst John Vinh pointed to Intel’s 18A yield progress and AMD’s AI GPU ramp as support for higher targets
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices shares climbed in early U.S. trading on Tuesday after KeyBanc Capital Markets upgraded both chipmakers, arguing demand from big cloud data-center buyers is running ahead of supply.
The move matters because investors have been hunting for more winners from the AI buildout beyond the usual suspects. A call that server chips are effectively booked out for 2026 feeds that narrative — and suggests pricing power is back in parts of the market.
It also lands at a time when supply constraints are shifting from a nuisance to a driver of forecasts. Tight memory supply, in particular, can ripple through everything from AI servers to PCs and reshape margins in odd ways.
KeyBanc analyst John Vinh said an Asia trip showed “outsized hyperscaler demand” and pointed to sharp price increases for DRAM and NAND — memory chips used in servers and consumer devices. The firm upgraded Intel and AMD to Overweight, a rating that typically signals it expects the shares to outperform. Investing
Intel was up 5.9% at $46.67, while AMD rose 5.6% to $219.40. Intel traded more than 47 million shares by mid-morning, versus about 21 million for AMD.
KeyBanc set a $60 price target on Intel and said the company is “largely sold out” of server CPUs for 2026, with demand strong enough that it may pursue a “10–15% ASP increase” — shorthand for a higher average selling price.
Vinh also pointed to manufacturing progress, saying Intel’s 18A process yields are “over 60%” and “good enough” to ramp Panther Lake, Intel’s next laptop platform. Yield is the share of usable chips coming off a wafer, a critical measure for whether a new manufacturing process is ready for volume.
The analyst flagged early traction at Intel’s foundry unit as well, writing that Intel Foundry Services has landed Apple for “low-end M-series processors” on 18A and is in talks around “A-series processors for iPhones in 2029.”
KeyBanc lifted AMD to Overweight with a $270 price target, calling the chipmaker “almost being completely sold out” of server CPUs in 2026. The firm expects AMD’s server CPU business to grow at least 50% in 2026 and sees AI-related revenue of $14 billion to $15 billion in 2026, supported by MI355 shipments and a ramp of its MI455-based Helios system. Quiverquant
KeyBanc’s broader trip note underlined how tight the AI supply chain has become. It raised its price target on memory maker Micron to $450 from $325 and said the memory cycle could be “stronger for longer,” while keeping an Overweight rating and a $275 target on Nvidia. Investing
But the upgrades lean heavily on one big assumption: hyperscaler spending stays hot and supply stays tight. A sharper-than-expected pullback in data-center orders — or a faster easing in memory and component bottlenecks — could undercut the pricing case quickly, while Intel still has to execute on manufacturing and foundry plans and AMD has to deliver clean ramps in a crowded AI accelerator market.
