New York, May 21, 2026, 04:14 (EDT)
- Intel was last quoted at $118.96, up 7.4% on Wednesday. U.S. regular trading hasn’t opened yet, with the open set for 9:30 a.m. Eastern.
- Chip stocks bounced, Nvidia stuck with its AI spending plans, and some analysts raised price targets for Intel. That fueled the rally.
- Memorial Day on Monday, May 25 is the next 2026 U.S. market holiday, according to the .
Intel shares jumped 7.4% to $118.96 in recent trading, pulling higher with other chip stocks as investors moved back into artificial-intelligence names around Nvidia’s results. That values Intel at roughly $604.7 billion.
Intel’s rally now has more riding on it than just a turnaround. It’s looking more and more like it depends on whether Wall Street thinks CPUs—the main chips for servers and PCs—will get a boost as AI workloads start moving from training models to actually using them.
Chip stocks rallied again. The iShares Semiconductor ETF jumped 4.7%. Advanced Micro Devices climbed 8.1% and Nvidia picked up 1.3% in the latest session. The Invesco QQQ Trust, which tracks the Nasdaq 100, was up 1.6%.
Wall Street’s major indexes climbed over 1% Wednesday, with gains coming from technology and chip names before Nvidia’s results, Reuters said. “Technology is driving the bus again today, and the AI theme,” Carol Schleif, chief market strategist at BMO Private Wealth, told Reuters. Reuters
Intel got new backing from analysts. Barron’s said Benchmark’s Cody Acree bumped his price target on Intel up to $140, up from $105. Citi’s Atif Malik also raised his target, moving it to $130 from $95, citing better CPU demand linked to AI.
Nvidia lifted the sector after results came in strong, but competition is back in focus. The company guided to $91 billion in second-quarter revenue, topping LSEG estimates of $86.84 billion. Nvidia also said it plans an $80 billion buyback. Shares slipped in after-hours trading as investors considered rivals.
Nvidia posted another strong quarter, eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said. But Bourne questioned if the current AI momentum will hold through 2027 and 2028, as workloads for inference pick up and chip competitors like Google, Amazon, AMD, and Intel get more attention. Inference is when a trained AI model is used to give responses or decisions, instead of being trained.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is making that case. According to Benzinga, Tan has promoted flatter management, quicker decisions and a “bad news first” approach. He says Intel’s 18A manufacturing process is now in volume production and yields are getting better. A foundry is a chip-making business for outside customers. Benzinga
The investor story isn’t complete. Seaport Research analyst Jay Goldberg told Reuters last week, “No company in history has ever fallen off the Moore’s law curve and made it back on.” J.P. Morgan analyst Harlan Sur said judging progress could need 12 to 18 months, and turning Intel’s foundry profitable could take at least five years. Reuters
Institutional firms have been buying the stock. Reuters looked at over 6,000 first-quarter 13-Fs and saw more than 2,000 institutions picked up Intel shares last quarter. Tiger Global took a new stake—1.6 million shares valued at $72.3 million as of March 31. A 13-F is a quarterly U.S. filing disclosing equity holdings for certain big managers.
But there’s a risk investors are buying in too soon on hopes of a rebound that still hinges on execution. Intel still has to show it can meet AI CPU demand, keep manufacturing on track, bring in more foundry customers against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and hold on to gains even if the AI rally fades or Nvidia’s lead pulls cash away from smaller recovery names.
Intel is still trading like a high-beta chip recovery play, not a drawn-out turnaround story. The stock keeps reacting to new hints on AI demand, analyst calls and supply trends. Thursday’s premarket is shaping up as another check on whether this rally can hold up after a strong session.
