Intel’s Stock Price Soars, and One Executive Explains the Surge

(SeaPRwire) –   “Intel is where solid reputations go to die,” veteran Silicon Valley investor Michael Marks once remarked. Founded in the 1960s in Santa Clara, California, the company followed the classic tech manufacturing arc: from rags to riches, then into a period of stagnation. Its core technology business has faced intensifying competition from Nvidia, AMD, and Arm. AI appeared to be yet another insurmountable hurdle for a firm built for an era when personal computers still felt relatively groundbreaking.

Intel’s shares hit an all-time high on Friday following the release of what was described as a “blockbuster” revenue forecast. New customers for its AI chips—including Tesla—and a June-quarter revenue projection of $14.8 billion pushed its share price up 24%. The stock has now climbed 120% year-to-date.

The AI boom has found another market darling. Far from struggling, Lip-Bu Tan, who took on the role of Intel’s chief executive officer in March 2025, is finding steady success, and investors are deeply grateful.

Greg Ernst serves as Intel’s chief revenue officer. Speaking to at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, he noted that the strategy implemented at that time was now bearing fruit, despite initial skepticism from some investors. (Tan had made it clear when he assumed office that beleaguered Intel was up against steep, significant challenges.)

“The good news is that demand for server CPUs [central processing units] has never been stronger,” Ernst stated. “Over the past six months, companies including Anthropic, [Google], and OpenAI have fully transitioned to true agentic-model architectures, which move beyond relying solely on a single large LLM [large language model] to instead utilize hundreds of smaller models and agents.”

“Suddenly, CPU demand has skyrocketed, since all these models need to communicate with one another. And what do CPUs excel at? They’re ideal for orchestration, managing cross-model communications, and tracking the data flowing back and forth between these systems.” Demand has become so intense that supply is struggling to keep pace with current orders.

The second pillar of Intel’s strategy—“deep strategic partnerships”—further amplifies its market opportunities.

“We made the decision to pursue several deep, strategic partnerships, which would grant us the option to issue new shares,” Ernst explained. “As you might expect, this move can have two possible outcomes for a company, since issuing new stock dilutes the holdings of existing shareholders. But our core thesis was that if the partnership is built on genuine technical collaboration, investors will recognize its inherent value and respond positively.”

“So, we started with a shortlist of potential partners. SoftBank was one, Nvidia was another. The U.S. government wasn’t on that initial list—this opportunity came together rapidly later on.”

The final segment of Ernst’s response touches on a controversial incident. Donald Trump initially demanded Tan resign from his role, citing Tan’s early-career ties to the Chinese semiconductor industry (Tan, a native of Malaysia, worked as an investor at the time). A meeting was subsequently held between the then-president, Howard Lutnick (the U.S. commerce secretary), and Tan, and the famously unpredictable Trump declared that Tan had an “amazing story.” In August, it was announced that the federal government would purchase a 10% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion, a valuation that has since jumped to $36 billion.

“Their investment has been extremely positive,” Ernst noted. “They’ve taken a very hands-off approach. We do provide them with regular updates on our progress. Another key factor for us is that we have a large number of excellent customers based in China. So we consistently maintain transparency with Chinese companies, the Chinese government, regarding what this U.S. investment means for our operations—after all, we are an American firm.”

I inquired whether the U.S. government had pressured Intel to divest its business interests in China. “No, there has been no such pressure whatsoever,” he replied.

In 2007, Intel passed up the opportunity to serve as the primary chip supplier for an upcoming new mobile device. “I failed to recognize its full potential,” Paul Otellini, Intel’s chief executive officer at the time, later recalled. Intel may have missed its chance to act as the technology partner for the original Apple iPhone. Tan is determined not to repeat that same error when it comes to agentic AI.