{"id":395291,"date":"2026-04-24T10:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T10:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/395291\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T10:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T10:56:09","slug":"intel-soars-on-signs-ai-boom-for-cpus-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/395291\/","title":{"rendered":"Intel soars on signs AI boom for CPUs is here"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Aditya Soni and Rashika Singh<\/p>\n

April 24 (Reuters) – Demand for Intel’s central processors from firms offering AI services was so strong in the first quarter that it sold even chips \u200cit had originally written off, a remarkable turnaround that sent the company’s shares soaring on Friday.<\/p>\n

The \u200cstock was 28% higher at $85 in premarket trading, on course to open at a record high that would surpass its 2000’s dot-com \u200bera peak and add more than $90 billion to the company’s market value, lifting it above $420 billion.<\/p>\n

Rival AMD and Arm also gained 7% each on growing conviction that inference – the process by which artificial intelligence<\/a> answers user queries – could restore central processing units to the heart of the industry after years of being eclipsed by graphics chips \u200cused in AI training.<\/p>\n

Nvidia<\/a>, the graphics chip \u2060giant that has dominated the AI boom, has also sensed the shift and braced for greater competition. It unveiled last month a new central processor, a rare move \u2060into territory it had long ceded to rivals.<\/p>\n

Its shares were little changed on Friday.<\/p>\n

At least 14 brokerages raised their price targets on Intel’s stock following the better-than-expected first-quarter results and a sales forecast above estimates, with HSBC pointing \u200bto growing \u200bdemand for Intel’s Xeon server CPUs used in AI \u200bdata centers.<\/p>\n

CFO David Zinsner said the forecast was \u200cpartly driven by higher prices and supply was tight in the first quarter, which forced Intel to dig into finished goods inventory and sell chips it had not expected to move.<\/p>\n

“It was either de-spec product or legacy product we had shelved and then we worked with customers. That helped a lot. I am not sure we have that benefit in the second quarter,” he said.<\/p>\n

Intel shares have already gained about 80% this \u200cyear, after a jump of about 84% last year, as \u200bits turnaround gathers steam under CEO Lip-Bu Tan after years of \u200bmissteps.<\/p>\n

It now trades at around 90 times \u200bits 12-month forward earnings estimates – its highest on record – much higher than the 37 \u200ctimes for AMD and 22 for Nvidia.<\/p>\n

Earlier this \u200bweek, Intel scored a symbolic \u200bboost to its contract manufacturing ambitions by securing Tesla<\/a> as a customer for its next-generation 14A chipmaking process tied to Elon Musk’s planned Terafab AI chip complex.<\/p>\n

“If the foundry business can start \u200bcontributing in a meaningful way in 2027 – \u200cas expected – that should really show that the company’s turnaround is complete,” said Bob O’Donnell, \u200bpresident and chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Rashika Singh, Zaheer Kachwala and Aditya Soni \u200bin Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Devika Syamnath)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aditya Soni and Rashika Singh April 24 (Reuters) – Demand for Intel’s central processors from firms offering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,18656,363,364,204284,204285,6163,111,139,69,204283,145],"class_list":["post-395291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-training","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-graphics-chip","tag-graphics-chips","tag-intel","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-remarkable-turnaround","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}