Intel Stock Soars 24% to Record High on AI Demand Surge

Historic Rally Breaks Three-Decade Record

Intel shares delivered their best single-day performance since 1987, soaring 23.6% on Friday to close at $82.57 . The chipmaker roared past its 2000 peak during the dot-com boom to reach an all-time high , marking a stunning reversal for a company that had struggled to find its footing in the artificial intelligence revolution.

Intel crushed Wall Street expectations with earnings per share of $0.29 versus consensus estimates of just $0.02, while revenue hit $13.58 billion against forecasts of $12.41 billion . First-quarter revenue jumped 7.2% to $13.58 billion from $12.67 billion a year earlier, breaking a pattern of declining revenue that had plagued five of the prior seven quarters .

The stock is now up 124% this year after jumping 84% in 2025 , transforming Intel from a value trap into one of the market's biggest winners. Intel was trading around $81 late into Friday's session, quadrupling from the $20.47 per share price the U.S. government paid for a 9.9% stake back in August 2025 .

AI Infrastructure Drives Unexpected Comeback

Analysts note that "CPU is reinserting itself as an indispensable foundation of the AI era, and the once sleepy CPU market has taken off as agentic workloads shift compute needs beyond GPUs" . While AI models still largely run on GPUs, the tasks that AI agents perform, such as browsing websites or searching for data in spreadsheets, rely on CPUs, making the humble chip far more popular .

Intel's data center and AI segment posted revenue of $5.05 billion, a 22.4% increase from the prior year, driven by surging demand for central processing units . AI-driven business revenue surged 40% year-over-year, and Intel delivered its sixth consecutive quarter of exceeding guidance with a 41% non-GAAP gross margin .

Executives acknowledged that demand is running ahead of available supply, with the company "meaningfully" undershipping customer needs, though this supply imbalance constrained Q1 revenue and could limit upside in the near term .

Strategic Partnerships Signal Transformation

CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took the helm early last year, has revived Wall Street interest in the struggling chipmaker by reeling in investments from the Trump administration and Nvidia, and by helping the company elbow its way into the AI boom . NVIDIA invested $5 billion in the company in late 2025 to collaborate on AI infrastructure, while Tesla announced plans to use Intel's 14A process for its next-generation Dojo and vehicle chips .

Intel also announced it is entering into a multiyear arrangement with Google that will see its Xeon CPUs power AI, inference, and other workloads for Google Cloud . The recent partnership with Tesla and SpaceX over the Terafab project confirms it's no longer just a value trap but a legitimate competitor in high-performance artificial intelligence infrastructure .

Analysts Raise Outlook Despite Overbought Conditions

Evercore ISI analysts upgraded the shares to the equivalent of a buy rating, noting that "INTC's new CEO fixed the balance sheet, and is executing on a strategy that appears to have put INTC back on the competitive track" . Dan Niles, who predicted the rally, told CNBC that "Friday's Intel rally is only the beginning," arguing that investors were only starting to reprice Intel's potential in the AI era .

The company provided second quarter 2026 guidance of $0.20 earnings per share, above the consensus of $0.09, and expects revenue of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion, compared to the consensus estimate of $13.04 billion . Analysts expect "very strong CPU demand this year," driven by the infrastructure needed to support autonomous AI applications , suggesting Intel's transformation from AI laggard to essential infrastructure provider may be just beginning.