NEW YORK, June 3, 2026, 19:04 (EDT)
- Intel ended the day up 4.43% at $112.71, halting a five-session losing streak.
- Intel shares moved higher after the company promoted its CPUs as a larger driver for the next AI cycle during Computex.
- The move was notable on a soft day for Wall Street. The Nasdaq slid 0.89%.
Intel stock climbed 4.43% to finish at $112.71 on Wednesday, snapping its five-day slide as traders reacted to new AI plans pitched at Computex in Taiwan. The shares were coming off a 13% drop over the losing streak and were still down 22% from their May 11 close before bouncing, according to Barron’s.
Intel is trying to show that CPUs can still play a bigger role in AI, even after two years where GPUs got most of the market’s attention. The company said at Computex it will launch Xeon 6+ processors and rack-scale AI hardware aimed at inference, the part of AI where a trained model gives answers.
Chip stocks gained even as the market slipped. The Philadelphia semiconductor index was up 1.4%, according to Reuters, while the Dow dropped 1.21%, the S&P 500 fell 0.74% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.89%. Investors took profits as oil rose and Middle East tensions weighed on markets.
Intel gained after Nvidia shook up the PC-chip space this week, rolling out a new AI chip for personal computers that investors saw as a challenge to Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Nvidia stock dropped 3.6% on Wednesday. AMD rose around 4%. The competition centers on whether CPUs might capture more AI spend.
Intel told Computex it’s building a rack-scale platform using Intel Xeon processors and SambaNova SN-50 RDUs, which are aimed at speeding up certain AI jobs. Foxconn will handle system integration. Intel also pointed to work with Siemens, Hitachi, Echo Neurotechnologies and Greenstone Biosciences.
Creative Strategies CEO Ben Bajarin, quoted by Intel, said agentic inference means AI systems that plan and execute in steps need about one CPU for every GPU, rather than a model that leans on GPUs for training. That’s good for Intel, with a more balanced CPU mix in data centers lifting its main server-chip business.
Intel’s new Xeon 6+ chips use Intel 18A and go after cloud-native, agentic AI and network-heavy tasks. Intel also noted its Core Ultra Series 3 platform is now in more than 325 consumer and commercial PC designs, and 18A has crossed 130 edge designs.
Market action is going beyond the latest product headlines. Reuters said last month that Intel shares were “almost a five bagger” since Lip-Bu Tan became CEO, though some analysts still say there are doubts on the company’s foundry push, which needs big spending and will take years to prove out. Reuters
Some areas of chips are getting a lift from macro buyers as well. “The AI names are trading on their own completely separate world,” Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird, told Reuters. The market is still buying some AI-linked stocks even while risk appetite cools elsewhere. Reuters
Chip costs are a clear risk. Morgan Stanley flagged “chipflation” as memory prices have jumped sixfold over the past year, driven by AI demand outpacing supply. Rising memory and parts costs could hurt PC makers and cloud firms, choking off some profits from the AI hardware surge for companies further down the line. Reuters
Intel is still facing execution risk. A better CPU cycle could be a boost, but Nvidia is moving into PCs, AMD is still a close CPU competitor, and Intel needs to prove that 18A and its foundry plan can land long-term external deals, not just spark interest in the stock.
