April 16, 2026, 10:30 PDT, Santa Clara, California.
Intel on Thursday launched its Core Series 3 mobile chips, introducing the 18A process—its latest manufacturing upgrade—to more affordable laptops and essential edge devices. Intel shares rose about 4.2% to $67.69 in morning trading, extending a sharp run-up ahead of next week’s earnings.
Intel’s pushing 18A beyond just high-end PCs, targeting a bigger swath of the market. Brokers are pointing to firmer demand on the server CPU side for Intel as AI workloads increasingly shift to inference—the stage where models spit out results.
Intel’s Panther Lake chips, built on the company’s 18A process in the U.S., will show up in more than 70 partner products over the next few months. Starting Thursday, brands like Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and Samsung are rolling out new systems with the chips inside. “Better technology” for students, families, and small businesses is the goal, according to Josh Newman, vice president in Intel’s client computing group. Newsroom
Mizuho lifted its price target for Intel to $59, while Bernstein opted for $60. Still, both stopped short of a full endorsement. UBS had already raised its target to $65 earlier this week and now expects first-quarter revenue to hit roughly $12.5 billion—just above Intel’s midpoint guidance of $12.2 billion.
Upgrades landed, but skepticism stuck around. Stacy Rasgon at Bernstein called the quarter “messy” and warned that the recent optimism could be “a bit hyped-up.” UBS’s Timothy Arcuri, by contrast, cited stronger enterprise demand and pegged server CPU price hikes at 10%, brightening the short-term outlook. MarketWatch
The sector squeeze just keeps going. In January, Reuters reported Intel was eyeing Panther Lake chips as its shot at clawing back PC market share from AMD—especially since most Lunar Lake chips had rolled off TSMC’s lines. Now, TSMC has raised its 2026 revenue forecast on Thursday, pointing to what it called “extremely robust” AI demand. Reuters
Intel is still working to broaden its footprint outside the PC business. Just last week, Google said it would keep using Intel Xeon processors and deepen their partnership on custom IPUs—specialized chips aimed at offloading some CPU jobs, which helps AI systems run more efficiently.
Intel closed the $14.2 billion purchase of Apollo’s 49% stake in Fab 34, its Irish joint venture, on April 8, a filing shows. That buyback involved cash plus a $6.5 billion bridge loan. Days earlier, Intel said it would jump into Elon Musk’s Terafab project with Tesla and SpaceX—showing the company is pushing hard on manufacturing, not just its traditional chip design focus.
But fresh risks keep cropping up. In January, Reuters pointed out that Intel was rushing to meet fast-growing AI server orders, grappling with memory shortages weighing on its PC unit, and not making much headway on 18A yields. Now, a U.S. appeals court has revived a piece of VLSI Technology’s patent case against Intel—throwing legal uncertainty back into the mix.
Intel is set to report first-quarter results after the bell on April 23. Shares have already pushed past the newly lifted price targets from Mizuho and Bernstein—$59 and $60, respectively. Attention zeroes in on the pace of 18A shipments and signs of life in server demand, both key to margin stability.
