For the better part of April, Intel’s stock chart has been one of those that causes traders to stop scrolling. On a long-term plot, the move from a 52-week low of $18.96 in May of last year to a closing high of $99.62 on May 2 appears nearly cartoonish. Then came Monday’s decline, which felt more like a market catching its breath than a reversal, with a 3.84% decline to $95.78. This will be difficult for anyone who followed Intel during the protracted wilderness years of 2023 and 2024 to comprehend. The stock has increased, but that’s not all. The reason for this is that it climbed in a vertical line that is typically associated with younger, simpler businesses.
A portion of it is revealed by the numbers. With $13.6 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, Intel exceeded its own guidance midpoint by $1.4 billion. In contrast to the consensus of nearly zero, adjusted earnings came in at $0.29 per share. Compared to the previous year, the Data Center and AI segment grew by 22%. Sales of foundries increased by 16%. The response on April 24 was a 23.6% increase in a single session, Intel’s largest one-day gain in nearly forty years. Investors are still debating the extent of the change, but there’s a feeling that something has actually changed within the company.
The fuse was lit by three things. Tesla was named an anchor customer for the proposed Terafab by Intel’s Foundry division on April 9. Alphabet promised to implement co-developed accelerators and Xeon processors throughout Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure. Two weeks later, the earnings beat came. One of the cycle’s more bizarre details emerged in late April when Intel revealed that it was charging high prices for chips with manufacturing flaws, deactivating the damaged parts and sending the functional ones to customers in dire need of AI silicon. In a single session, that news alone added 12%. When faulty inventory turns into a margin opportunity, the supply story is tighter than the official numbers indicate. This is the kind of detail that causes you to pause.
Beneath all of this is CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who assumed the position in March 2025 and has been redefining what Intel truly does for the past fourteen months. He stated during the earnings call that the CPU-to-GPU ratio in AI deployments has changed from 1:8 to 1:4 and is approaching parity. If he is correct, which is still up for debate, the consequences for Xeon demand would be greater than what most models currently cost. Long-term contracts with Google and other companies, lasting three to five years, are the kind that quietly stabilize a stock for years without making headlines. When Tan speaks, it’s difficult to ignore how cautious he is when using terms like “transition” and “rebuild.” He is not offering a turnaround. He’s talking about one in progress.
Then there is the U.S. government, which became Intel’s largest single shareholder last August when it acquired an effective 10% stake in the company. The stock has more than quadrupled since that investment. It’s a unique cap-table arrangement that provides the business with a level of strategic support that is difficult for pure private capital to match. There seems to be disagreement over whether that is a long-term benefit or a potential problem.
However, the skeptics are not silent. The average target on Wall Street is $78, which is significantly less than the current price. With a company still reporting GAAP losses, the forward P/E is close to 96, and Mobileye’s $3.9 billion goodwill impairment was included in Q1. Recently, short interest increased by nearly 21%. Overbought is screamed by the RSI. The stock may return a portion of these gains swiftly or it may absorb them more slowly. Which is still unknown. In any case, the Intel narrative is no longer about decline. That in and of itself is noteworthy.
