NEW YORK, Jan 8, 2026, 05:01 EST — Premarket
Intel shares jumped 6.5% on Wednesday to close at $42.63, after touching a 52-week high of $44.57 as trading picked up around its first laptop platform built on the company’s new 18A manufacturing process. About 166 million shares changed hands, roughly 2-1/2 times Tuesday’s volume. 1
The move matters now because 18A sits at the center of Intel’s turnaround pitch — that it can regain chip-making edge and sell manufacturing capacity to outside customers in its foundry business. Intel has framed the new Core Ultra Series 3 line as the first AI PC platform built on 18A, a milestone investors have been waiting to see in products, not slides. 2
The rally has pushed the stock up about 15% in the first four trading sessions of 2026. “As we go throughout 2026, we’ll hear more good news about their future foundry prospects,” Melius Research’s Ben Reitzes said in an interview on CNBC. 3
At CES in Las Vegas, Intel unveiled its Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” processors and said systems would be available globally starting Jan. 27, after pre-orders opened Jan. 6. “With Series 3, we are laser-focused on improving power efficiency,” Jim Johnson, who runs Intel’s client computing group, said. The top models include a neural processing unit rated at up to 50 TOPS — a “trillion-operations-per-second” yardstick often used to describe on-device AI performance. 4
Melius upgraded Intel to “buy” from “hold” and set a $50 price target, flagging optionality in the foundry effort even as it kept Nvidia and Broadcom as preferred picks elsewhere in chips. 5
Intel on Wednesday set Jan. 22 for fourth-quarter and full-year results, to be released after the market close, followed by a conference call at 2 p.m. PT. That report is likely to put numbers on what CES could not: whether the 18A ramp is tracking to plan, and what it does to costs and margins. 6
Still, the stock’s run-up leans on a cleaner manufacturing ramp than Intel has managed in recent years. Intel has struggled with yields — the share of usable chips per wafer — for Panther Lake, and any renewed hiccup could push OEM launches out or pressure profitability, especially with AMD still pressing in PCs. 7
