SANTA CLARA, California, April 30, 2026, 04:02 (PDT)
- Intel jumped to $94.75 early Thursday, a 12% move above its prior close. That surge followed last week’s earnings beat, which set off a sharp rally.
- Driving the move: a report suggests Google is considering Intel’s EMIB advanced packaging tech for its upcoming TPU, the AI chip handling both training and inference.
- Big numbers on both sides: Intel Foundry turned in $5.42 billion in revenue for the first quarter, yet ended up $2.44 billion in the red, according to a filing.
Intel stock surged to an all-time high Thursday morning, driven by word that Google may use the company’s advanced packaging tech in upcoming AI chips—a fresh vote of confidence in CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s overhaul strategy. Shares jumped 12.1% to hit $94.75, according to Barron’s, marking Intel’s biggest rally in years.
The shift is significant: Intel isn’t just being valued as a PC and server-chip company anymore. Now, investors are weighing if Intel Foundry—the expensive contract-manufacturing division—can actually attract external clients for AI chips and finally stop pulling down the company’s profit.
Apple is weighing Intel’s 18A-P process for upcoming M-series chips, TrendForce said Wednesday, citing Taiwan’s Commercial Times. Over at Google, the report adds, its TPU v8e might tap Intel’s EMIB—Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge—a packaging technology that links separate chunks of silicon in a single chip. That’s a critical move as AI processors balloon in size and complexity.
Google rolled out its eighth-generation Tensor Processing Units last week, introducing TPU 8t for training and TPU 8i for inference—the step where AI models actually respond or act. The company made no mention of Intel as a supplier in that reveal.
Intel and Google already have a public partnership in place. Back on April 9, the two companies kicked off a multiyear deal involving Intel Xeon CPUs and custom infrastructure processing units—IPUs—meant for Google’s AI and cloud systems. Google’s Amin Vahdat described Intel as a “trusted partner for nearly two decades.” Intel
The new report comes just after Intel’s first-quarter revenue hit $13.6 billion—a 7% rise from last year—and the chipmaker is guiding for second-quarter revenue somewhere between $13.8 billion and $14.8 billion. CFO David Zinsner pointed to “unprecedented demand for silicon.” Adjusted EPS this quarter? Intel’s projecting 20 cents. Intel
Tan isn’t calling this demand uptick a passing blip. During last week’s analyst call, he pointed out that the CPU rebound linked to AI inference is “not just our wishful thinking.” Cloud providers, he said, are shifting heavier workloads to central processors, not just sticking with GPUs—the same graphics chips that put Nvidia in the lead during the early run-up of the AI surge. Reuters
Competition remains fierce. Last week, Reuters noted AMD and Arm gained alongside Intel as investors speculated that CPUs might reclaim a bigger piece of the AI pie through inference. Meanwhile, Nvidia stepped into CPU territory with its own new processor.
The rally may be outpacing the company’s fundamentals. Reuters noted Intel shares were changing hands at nearly 90 times forward earnings following last week’s jump—well above AMD’s 37 and Nvidia’s 22. Zinsner flagged that some of Intel’s first-quarter lift was tied to moving older or lower-spec inventory, a tailwind that might not show up again in Q2.
Intel, in its latest filing, spelled out risks: without sufficient committed demand for its next-gen Intel 14A manufacturing process, the company could hit pause—or even scrap—that node and future technologies, according to the document.
The foundry business keeps demanding cash. Intel has disclosed it repurchased Apollo’s 49% minority interest in the Ireland Fab 34 venture for roughly $14.2 billion this month, tapping cash, short-term investments, and a $6.5 billion term loan to fund the deal.
Investors are already betting on Intel, despite contracts not yet out in the open. Bob O’Donnell, who heads up TECHnalysis Research, told Reuters that if foundry business ramps up in 2027, that’s the real sign the “turnaround is complete.” Reuters
