# Intel

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/intel
> Updated: 2026-06-21
> Categories: AI Companies, AI Hardware
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), a free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Quote with attribution.

**Intel Corporation** is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, that designs CPUs, GPUs, and Gaudi AI accelerators and operates Intel Foundry, the most advanced chip manufacturer in the United States. Founded on July 18, 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, it commercialized the first microprocessor in 1971 and dominated the personal computer and server eras with its x86 processors. Intel entered the generative AI boom in a weakened state, with no competitive answer to [NVIDIA](/wiki/nvidia)'s data center [GPUs](/wiki/gpu) and a manufacturing arm that had fallen behind [TSMC](/wiki/tsmc). The result was one of the most dramatic corporate turnaround attempts in technology. In 2025 the United States government converted CHIPS Act awards into a 9.9 percent equity stake [1], NVIDIA invested $5 billion as part of a product alliance [2], [SoftBank](/wiki/softbank) added $2 billion [3], and the board handed the CEO job to semiconductor veteran [Lip-Bu Tan](/wiki/lip_bu_tan) [4]. By mid-2026, with the company's 18A process shipping in volume and a reported multi-million-unit [tensor processing unit](/wiki/google_tpu) foundry order from [Google](/wiki/google), Intel's shares had staged a sharp recovery [5].

## What does Intel make?

Intel designs and manufactures central processing units for PCs (Core and Core Ultra), servers (Xeon), discrete Arc GPUs, and [Gaudi](/wiki/intel_gaudi) [AI accelerators](/wiki/ai_accelerator), and it operates Intel Foundry, which fabricates chips for Intel itself and for external customers. Its main reporting segments are Client Computing Group, Data Center and AI (DCAI), and Intel Foundry; it also retains majority ownership of [Mobileye](/wiki/mobileye), the driver-assistance and autonomous-driving company.

Full-year 2025 revenue was $52.9 billion, roughly flat year over year, with fourth-quarter revenue of $13.7 billion exceeding guidance despite industry-wide supply constraints [6]. Under a restructuring launched in 2025, Intel cut its workforce from about 109,000 employees at the end of 2024 toward a target of roughly 75,000 core employees by the end of 2025 [7]. Intel remains the leading supplier of PC and server CPUs, but in AI accelerators it is a marginal player behind NVIDIA and [AMD](/wiki/amd); its current AI strategy centers on [inference](/wiki/inference), [AI PCs](/wiki/ai_pc), and manufacturing other companies' AI silicon.

## History

Intel began as a memory-chip maker and produced the first commercial microprocessor, the 4004, in 1971. The 8086 processor of 1978 established the x86 instruction set that still underpins most PCs and servers. Under Andy Grove the company exited the memory business in the mid-1980s to focus on processors, and co-founder Gordon Moore gave his name to [Moore's law](/wiki/moores_law), the observation that transistor counts double roughly every two years. Through the "Wintel" era and the rise of cloud computing, Intel's Xeon line came to power the large majority of the world's servers.

The company famously missed the smartphone transition, and its early accelerator efforts (the Larrabee graphics project and the Xeon Phi many-core line) were both abandoned. It then tried to buy its way into AI: [Nervana Systems](/wiki/nervana_systems) in 2016, computer-vision chipmaker Movidius in 2016, Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017 (partially floated in 2022), and Israeli accelerator startup [Habana Labs](/wiki/habana_labs) for about $2 billion in December 2019, after which the Nervana processor line was shut down [8].

[Pat Gelsinger](/wiki/pat_gelsinger) returned as CEO in early 2021 with the IDM 2.0 strategy: regain process leadership and open Intel's fabs to outside customers. The plan proved enormously expensive just as the AI boom shifted data center spending from CPUs to GPUs. In August 2024 Intel announced more than 15,000 job cuts and suspended its dividend; in December 2024 the board forced Gelsinger out [9]. For 2024 the company reported a net loss of $18.8 billion on revenue of $53.1 billion, its first annual loss since 1986 [10].

## What are Intel's AI hardware products?

### How does Intel Gaudi 3 compare to NVIDIA?

Intel's flagship AI chip line is Gaudi, inherited from Habana Labs. Gaudi processors power Amazon EC2 DL1 instances (Gaudi 1) and were followed by Gaudi 2 in 2022. Gaudi 3, unveiled at Intel Vision on April 9, 2024 and built on TSMC's 5 nm process, delivers 1,835 teraFLOPS of FP8 compute, carries 128 GB of HBM2e memory with 3.7 TB/s of bandwidth, and was marketed primarily on price-performance against NVIDIA's [H100](/wiki/nvidia_h100) [11]. At launch Intel projected that Gaudi 3 inference throughput would "outperform the H100 by 50% on average" across Llama 2 (7B and 70B) and Falcon 180B, while costing less per system, even though raw peak throughput trailed the H100 and H200 [11]. Commercial traction was nonetheless weak: on the October 2024 earnings call Gelsinger admitted Gaudi would miss even its modest $500 million revenue target for 2024, citing the Gaudi 2 to Gaudi 3 transition and software ease-of-use problems, and Intel took a $300 million accelerator inventory write-down [12]. [IBM](/wiki/ibm) Cloud became the first cloud service provider to deploy Gaudi 3, with availability rolling out in 2025 [13].

### What replaced Falcon Shores on Intel's roadmap?

The roadmap has been repeatedly reset. In January 2025 Intel canceled the commercial release of Falcon Shores, the GPU meant to succeed Gaudi, relegating it to an internal test chip and pointing instead to Jaguar Shores, a rack-scale AI system with no announced date [14]. In October 2025, at the OCP Global Summit, Intel unveiled Crescent Island, a data center GPU aimed squarely at inference: it uses the Xe3P architecture with 160 GB of LPDDR5X memory, sidestepping the shortage-prone [high-bandwidth memory](/wiki/high_bandwidth_memory) used by rivals, and targets air-cooled enterprise servers and "tokens-as-a-service" providers [15]. At Computex in June 2026 Intel said partners could configure up to 480 GB of memory, with customer sampling planned for the second half of 2026 [16]. On software, Intel maintains the [OpenVINO](/wiki/openvino) inference toolkit and backs oneAPI as an open alternative to NVIDIA's [CUDA](/wiki/cuda) ecosystem.

| Product | Role | Status (June 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Gaudi 3 | Training and inference accelerator (TSMC 5 nm, 128 GB HBM2e) | Shipping; deployed on IBM Cloud [13] |
| Falcon Shores | Data center GPU | Canceled as a product in January 2025; internal test chip [14] |
| Crescent Island | Inference GPU (Xe3P, 160 to 480 GB LPDDR5X) | Customer sampling planned for second half of 2026 [16] |
| Jaguar Shores | Rack-scale AI system | In development; no announced launch date [14] |

### What is an Intel AI PC?

Intel coined much of the "AI PC" marketing push. The Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors launched on December 14, 2023 were Intel's first client chips with an integrated [neural processing unit](/wiki/neural_processing_unit) (11 TOPS) and its first chiplet-based client design; Intel set a goal of shipping AI-capable PCs to more than 100 million people through 2025 [17]. Lunar Lake (Core Ultra 200V, September 2024) raised the NPU to 48 TOPS, clearing the 40-TOPS bar for [Microsoft](/wiki/microsoft)'s [Copilot+ PC](/wiki/copilot_plus_pc) program [18].

At CES on January 5, 2026, Intel launched Core Ultra Series 3 ("Panther Lake"), the first volume product built on its 18A node, combining a 50-TOPS NPU with Xe3 integrated graphics rated at 120 TOPS for up to 180 platform TOPS; systems reached stores on January 27, 2026, with more than 200 designs planned [19].

### How do Intel's server CPUs fit into AI systems?

Even where NVIDIA GPUs win, Intel increasingly supplies the host processor. NVIDIA selected the 64-core Xeon 6776P as the CPU for its DGX B300 [Blackwell](/wiki/nvidia_blackwell) Ultra systems in May 2025 [20], and Xeon 6 parts were later chosen as host CPUs for [DGX](/wiki/nvidia_dgx) Rubin NVL8 systems [21]. In June 2026, at Computex, Intel launched Xeon 6+ "Clearwater Forest," its first 18A server processor, scaling to 288 efficiency cores with 576 MB of L3 cache; Intel claims about 30 percent better per-thread performance than AMD's 192-core EPYC 9965 [22]. Tan has framed this CPU resurgence as central to Intel's AI case, saying "the CPU is reinserting itself as the indispensable foundation of the AI era" and now "serves as the orchestration layer and critical control plane for the entire AI stack" [37].

## Why is Intel Foundry strategically important?

Gelsinger's IDM 2.0 bet, continued in modified form under Tan, is that Intel can become a Western alternative to TSMC. The "five nodes in four years" roadmap culminated in Intel 18A, a 1.8 nanometer-class node introducing RibbonFET gate-all-around transistors and PowerVia backside power delivery. In October 2025 Intel declared Fab 52 in Chandler, Arizona fully operational, beginning high-volume 18A production; it is the most advanced process technology developed and manufactured in the United States [23].

Economically, the foundry remains a drag: in 2024 Intel Foundry posted a $13.4 billion operating loss on $17.5 billion of mostly internal revenue [10]. External commitments exist (Microsoft announced a chip design on 18A in 2024, and [Amazon Web Services](/wiki/amazon_web_services) agreed to build an AI fabric chip with Intel), but committed third-party volumes are small [24]. For the next node, 14A, Intel said in early 2026 that it had two prospective anchor customers, with firm decisions expected between the second half of 2026 and the first half of 2027; management has warned that leading-edge investment depends on winning such commitments [25]. Intel targets foundry break-even around 2027 [26]. The US government's 2025 equity deal reinforces the strategy: Washington received a five-year warrant for an additional 5 percent of Intel at $20 per share, exercisable only if Intel's ownership of the foundry falls below 51 percent, effectively discouraging a spin-off [27].

Momentum improved markedly in 2026. On June 8 and 9, 2026, multiple outlets reported that Google had placed an order for more than 3 million next-generation TPUs to be manufactured by Intel in 2028, and that NVIDIA was evaluating 18A and Intel's advanced packaging for a future multi-die GPU; Intel shares jumped about 9 to 11 percent on the reports, which neither Intel nor Google has formally confirmed [5].

## Who is Intel's CEO and what is the turnaround plan?

After Gelsinger's forced retirement on December 1, 2024, CFO David Zinsner and products chief Michelle Johnston Holthaus served as interim co-CEOs [9]. On March 12, 2025 Intel named Lip-Bu Tan chief executive, effective March 18, 2025. Tan ran Cadence Design Systems from 2009 to 2021, founded the venture firm Walden International in 1987, and had quit Intel's board in August 2024 [4].

Tan moved quickly: canceling planned fabs in Germany and Poland, slowing the Ohio buildout, consolidating assembly and test operations, and cutting management layers by about half, with $1.9 billion in restructuring charges in the second quarter of 2025 alone [7][28]. Intel also sold 51 percent of its Altera FPGA unit to Silver Lake for $4.46 billion, valuing Altera at $8.75 billion; the deal closed on September 15, 2025 [29]. Tan has framed the AI strategy around a deliberate narrowing of focus: "We will concentrate our efforts on areas we can disrupt and differentiate, like inference and agentic AI," starting from "emerging AI workloads" and working "backward to design software, systems and silicon that enable the best customer outcomes" [36].

## How did the US government and NVIDIA come to invest in Intel?

Intel's 2025 capital story was extraordinary. In early August 2025 President Donald Trump publicly demanded Tan's resignation over his past investments in Chinese chip firms, then reversed course after a White House meeting; two weeks later the equity deal was announced [30].

| Investor | Announced | Amount | Price per share | Approximate stake |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SoftBank Group | August 18, 2025 | $2.0 billion | $23.00 | about 2 percent [3] |
| US government | August 22, 2025 | $8.9 billion | $20.47 | 9.9 percent [1] |
| NVIDIA | September 18, 2025 (closed December 29, 2025) | $5.0 billion | $23.28 | about 4 percent [2][32] |

The government's $8.9 billion purchase of 433.3 million shares was funded by $5.7 billion in awarded but unpaid [CHIPS Act](/wiki/chips_and_science_act) grants and $3.2 billion from the Secure Enclave defense chip program, on top of $2.2 billion in grants already received; Intel says the stake is passive, with no board seat [1][31]. The NVIDIA agreement goes beyond money: Intel will build custom x86 CPUs for NVIDIA's AI infrastructure platforms and x86 system-on-chips integrating NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets for PCs, with the architectures linked by [NVLink](/wiki/nvlink) [2]. The FTC cleared the investment on December 18, 2025, and it closed on December 29, 2025 [32]. Critics across the political spectrum questioned the precedent of direct federal ownership in a publicly traded chipmaker [30].

## Recent developments

Intel reported full-year 2025 revenue of $52.9 billion on January 22, 2026, its fifth consecutive quarter of beating its own forecasts [6]. First-quarter 2026 results, announced April 23, 2026, marked the clearest inflection: revenue of $13.6 billion beat guidance by about $1.4 billion, DCAI revenue rose 22 percent year over year to $5.1 billion with a $1.5 billion operating profit, and non-GAAP EPS more than doubled to $0.29 [33]. The stock surged past its dot-com-era record high from 2000 [34], and by late April 2026 the government's stake was worth about $36 billion, a roughly 300 percent paper gain [35].

In June 2026 Intel launched Clearwater Forest at Computex [22] and benefited from the reported Google TPU order and NVIDIA's evaluation of 18A [5]. The competitive gap nonetheless remains wide: NVIDIA still dominates AI training silicon, AMD holds the clear number-two position in data center GPUs, and Intel's near-term accelerator hopes rest on Crescent Island sampling in late 2026 [16] and on Jaguar Shores, which still has no launch date [14]. Intel's AI relevance in 2026 rests less on beating NVIDIA's GPUs than on surrounding them: host CPUs in AI servers, NPUs in hundreds of millions of PCs, and a US-based foundry that rivals and hyperscalers are beginning to take seriously.

## References

1. CNBC, "U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel, as Trump expands control over private sector," August 22, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/22/intel-goverment-equity-stake.html
2. NVIDIA Newsroom, "NVIDIA and Intel to Develop AI Infrastructure and Personal Computing Products," September 18, 2025. https://investor.nvidia.com/news/press-release-details/2025/NVIDIA-and-Intel-to-Develop-AI-Infrastructure-and-Personal-Computing-Products/default.aspx
3. Intel Newsroom, "SoftBank Group and Intel Corporation Sign $2B Investment Agreement," August 18, 2025. https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/softbank-group-and-intel-corporation-sign-2b-investment-agreement
4. Intel Newsroom, "Intel Appoints Lip-Bu Tan as Chief Executive Officer," March 12, 2025. https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/intel-appoints-lip-bu-tan-chief-executive-officer
5. TrendForce, "Intel Foundry Gains Momentum as Google Reportedly Orders 3M TPUs, NVIDIA Evaluates 18A for Multi-Die GPU Design," June 9, 2026. https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/06/09/news-intel-foundry-gains-momentum-as-google-reportedly-orders-3m-tpus-nvidia-evaluates-18a-for-multi-die-gpu-design/
6. The Motley Fool, "Intel (INTC) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript," January 23, 2026. https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/01/23/intel-intc-q4-2025-earnings-call-transcript/
7. Intel Corporation, Q2 2025 earnings release (Form 8-K exhibit), July 24, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000050863/000005086325000107/q225_earningsrelease.htm
8. Globes, "Intel launches Habana Labs Gaudi 3 AI accelerator," April 2024. https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-intel-launches-habana-labs-gaudi-3-ai-accelerator-1001490202
9. CNBC, "Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger ousted by board after disastrous performance," December 2, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/02/intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-is-out.html
10. Intel Corporation, Q4 and full-year 2024 earnings release (Form 8-K exhibit), January 30, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000050863/000005086325000004/q424_earningsrelease.htm
11. Tom's Hardware, "Intel details Gaudi 3 at Vision 2024: new AI accelerator sampling to partners now, volume production in Q3," April 9, 2024. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-details-guadi-3-at-vision-2024-new-ai-accelerator-sampling-to-partners-now-volume-production-in-q3
12. CNBC, "Intel (INTC) Q3 earnings report 2024," October 31, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/31/intel-intc-q3-earnings-report-2024.html
13. Intel Newsroom, "IBM Cloud is First Service Provider to Deploy Intel Gaudi 3," 2025. https://newsroom.intel.com/artificial-intelligence/ibm-cloud-first-service-provider-deploy-intel-gaudi-3
14. Tom's Hardware, "Intel cancels Falcon Shores GPU for AI workloads, Jaguar Shores to be successor," January 31, 2025. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/intel-cancels-falcon-shores-gpu-for-ai-workloads-jaguar-shores-to-be-successor
15. Tom's Hardware, "Intel unveils Crescent Island, an inference-only GPU with Xe3P architecture and 160GB of memory," October 14, 2025. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/intel-unveils-crescent-island-an-inference-only-gpu-with-xe3p-architecture-and-160gb-of-memory
16. Tom's Hardware, "Intel details long-awaited Crescent Island AI GPU at Computex, boasts up to 480 GB of LPDDR5X," June 2026. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/intel-details-long-awaited-crescent-island-ai-gpu-at-computex-boasts-up-to-480-gb-of-lpddr5x-to-combat-memory-shortages-company-shares-more-details-of-its-xe3p-inference-accelerator-at-computex
17. Tom's Hardware, "Meet the Intel Core Ultra processor lineup, with built-in NPUs for AI, and Arc graphics," December 14, 2023. https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/intel-core-ultra-meteor-lake-u-h-series-specs-skus
18. ASUS, "Intel Panther Lake vs Lunar Lake: How Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Processor Redefines the AI PC Era," 2026. https://www.asus.com/blog/intel-panther-lake-vs-lunar-lake-how-intel-core-ultra-series-3-processor-redefines-the-ai-pc-era/
19. Intel Newsroom, "CES 2026: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Debut as First Built on Intel 18A," January 5, 2026. https://newsroom.intel.com/client-computing/ces-2026-intel-core-ultra-series-3-debut-first-built-on-intel-18a
20. The Register, "Nvidia taps Intel's Xeon 6 CPUs for DGX B300 boxes," May 23, 2025. https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/23/nvidia_intel_dgx/
21. Intel Newsroom, "Intel Xeon 6 used as Host CPUs in NVIDIA DGX Rubin NVL8 Systems," 2026. https://newsroom.intel.com/data-center/intel-xeon-6-used-as-host-cpus-in-nvidia-dgx-rubin-nvl8-systems
22. Tom's Hardware, "Intel Xeon 6+ 'Clearwater Forest' puts 18A in the data center with up to 288 cores," June 2026. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-xeon-6-clearwater-forest-puts-18a-in-the-data-center-with-up-to-288-cores-576-mb-of-l3-cache-new-xeon-6990e-is-30-percent-faster-per-thread-than-192-core-amd-epyc-9965-says-intel
23. Data Center Dynamics, "Intel details Clearwater Forest data center processor architecture, announces new Arizona Fab 52 is fully operational," October 2025. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/intel-details-clearwater-forest-data-center-processor-architecture-announces-new-arizona-fab-52-is-fully-operational/
24. Nasdaq, "Intel Foundry Is Still Struggling to Win Customers," 2026. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/intel-foundry-still-struggling-win-customers
25. Tom's Hardware, "Intel says it has two prospective customers for 14A, expects to hear about commitments in second half of 2026," 2026. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/intel-says-it-has-two-prospective-customers-for-14a-expects-to-hear-about-commitments-in-second-half-of-2026
26. Wccftech, "Intel Says Upcoming 18A & 14A Chips Have 'Limited Customer Commitments'; Foundry Division To Achieve Breakeven By 2027," 2025. https://wccftech.com/intel-says-upcoming-chips-have-limited-customer-commitments/
27. Data Center Dynamics, "US gov't to take extra 5% stake in Intel should chipmaker sell majority stake in its foundry business," August 2025. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/us-govt-to-take-extra-5-stake-in-intel-should-chipmaker-sell-majority-stake-in-its-foundry-business/
28. RTE, "Intel says it has completed majority of planned layoffs," July 24, 2025. https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2025/0724/1525244-intel-layoffs/
29. Tom's Hardware, "Intel sells 51% of Altera FPGA business to Silver Lake for $4.46 billion," April 14, 2025. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/intel-sells-51-percent-of-altera-fpga-business-to-silver-lake-for-usd4-46-billion
30. CNN Business, "The US takes a 10% stake in Intel as part of Trump's big tech push," August 22, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/tech/trump-intel-10-percent-stake
31. Manufacturing Dive, "US government to take 10% stake in Intel with CHIPS funding," August 2025. https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/us-government-10-percent-stake-intel-chips-funding-8-9-billion/758518/
32. CNBC, "Nvidia takes $5 billion stake in Intel under September agreement," December 29, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/29/nvidia-takes-5-billion-stake-in-intel-under-september-agreement.html
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34. TradingKey, "Intel Smashes Q1 2026 Earnings and Breaks Its 2000 All-Time High," April 2026. https://www.tradingkey.com/analysis/stocks/us-stocks/261824989-intel-intc-q1-eps-stock-ai-google-tesla-nvdia-tradingkey
35. Bloomberg, "Intel Stake Held by US Government Jumps to $36 Billion After Share Rally," April 24, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-24/us-government-stake-in-intel-has-jumped-300-to-36-billion
36. Intel Newsroom, "Lip-Bu Tan: Steps in the Right Direction," July 24, 2025. https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/lip-bu-tan-steps-in-the-right-direction
37. DigiTimes, "Commentary: Lip-Bu Tan's AI and openness strategy to reinvent new Intel," October 15, 2025. https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20251015PD217/intel-lip-bu-tan-ai-agent-ai-inference-2025.html