Santa Clara, California, April 16, 2026, 10:30 (PDT)
Intel on Thursday rolled out its Core Series 3 mobile chips, bringing the company’s 18A process—the most recent update to its manufacturing tech—down to lower-priced laptops and key edge devices. Shares of Intel climbed roughly 4.2% to $67.69 in morning trading, building on a steep rally heading into next week’s earnings report.
Intel’s launch is notable—it’s aiming to get 18A out of the high-end PC niche and into broader market segments. Brokers, meanwhile, are flagging stronger server CPU demand for Intel as more AI workloads tilt toward inference, the phase where trained models start generating responses.
Intel says its new chips, built on the Panther Lake platform and using the 18A process—developed and produced in the U.S.—are set to appear in more than 70 partner designs in the coming months. Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, MSI and Samsung are among the system makers with launches starting Thursday. Josh Newman, vice president in Intel’s client computing group, described the effort as aimed at bringing “better technology” to students, families, and small businesses. Newsroom
Mizuho set a new price target on Intel at $59, and Bernstein followed with $60, but neither firm went fully bullish on the stock. UBS, which bumped its target up to $65 earlier this week, sees first-quarter revenue landing around $12.5 billion—a notch higher than Intel’s current midpoint forecast of $12.2 billion.
Upgrades failed to erase doubts. Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon flagged the quarter as potentially “messy” and cautioned that some optimism looks “a bit hyped-up.” UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri, on the other hand, pointed to firmer enterprise demand and estimated 10% price hikes for server CPUs as factors buoying the short-term picture. MarketWatch
Pressure in the sector isn’t letting up. Back in January, Reuters said Intel was banking on Panther Lake chips to reclaim PC market share from AMD, after the earlier Lunar Lake lineup had mostly come out of TSMC’s foundries. Fast forward to Thursday—TSMC bumped up its revenue outlook for 2026, citing “extremely robust” demand for AI. Reuters
Intel’s efforts to diversify beyond the PC market continue. Last week, Google announced plans to stick with Intel Xeon processors and expand their collaboration on custom IPUs—those specialized chips designed to relieve CPUs of certain tasks, boosting AI system efficiency.
Intel wrapped up the $14.2 billion buyback of Apollo’s 49% share in Ireland’s Fab 34 JV on April 8, according to a filing. The deal was covered by cash and a $6.5 billion bridge loan. Just before that, Intel announced plans to join Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative alongside Tesla and SpaceX—another clear signal that the company is betting its comeback on manufacturing, not just chip design.
But the risks are piling up. Back in January, Reuters flagged that Intel was scrambling to keep up with AI server demand, dealing with memory shortages hitting its PC segment, and still struggling to lift 18A yields. And now, a U.S. appeals court has breathed new life into part of VLSI Technology’s patent suit against Intel, bringing legal uncertainty back into play.
Intel posts Q1 numbers after the bell April 23, with shares trading north of the recently raised $59 and $60 price targets from Mizuho and Bernstein. The focus: whether a ramp in 18A shipments and firmer server demand can keep margins steady.
