Is Intel Stock the Next Nvidia?

Shares of chipmaker Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) person been connected a singular run. As of this writing, the banal has soared astir 500% implicit the past year, with overmuch of that summation piling up successful the past respective weeks alone. After the institution posted its first-quarter results successful precocious April and was reported to person reached a preliminary chip-manufacturing statement with Apple earlier this month, the banal notched a caller 52-week precocious adjacent $130.

This benignant of determination people invites a question: Could Intel beryllium the adjacent Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA)?

The framing makes immoderate sense. Both are AI-tied semiconductor giants, some person been pulled into the aforesaid generative AI infrastructure narrative, and some person CEOs talking up multiyear level shifts. But the underlying businesses look precise antithetic -- and truthful bash the expectations baked into their stocks today.

The bull lawsuit shouldn't beryllium ignored

To beryllium fair, there's much to Intel's rally than conscionable hype.

The chipmaker's first-quarter 2026 gross roseate 7% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth to $13.6 billion, beating the midpoint of management's ain guidance by much than $1 cardinal and marking the sixth consecutive 4th Intel has exceeded its ain forecast. Further, non-GAAP (adjusted) net per stock landed astatine $0.29, easy clearing management's forecast for breakeven. And the company's adjusted gross borderline expanded to 41% from 39.2% successful the year-ago quarter.

The information halfway and AI segment, which is present the focal constituent of the bull case, did adjacent better. Segment gross roseate 22% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth to $5.1 cardinal successful Q1, accelerating sharply from 9% maturation successful the 4th fourth of 2025.

And Intel main fiscal serviceman David Zinsner seemed to bespeak that Intel is astatine the halfway of a pivotal infinitesimal successful the AI boom.

These results bespeak "the increasing and indispensable relation of the CPU successful the AI epoch and unprecedented request for silicon," Zinsner explained successful the company's first-quarter net release. And this makes sense. As AI workloads displacement from training-heavy usage cases toward inference and agentic systems, the emblematic ratio of GPUs to CPUs successful a deployment whitethorn compress, giving Intel's Xeon enactment a bigger spot astatine the table.

The strategical signals are besides lining up.

Last year, Nvidia agreed to put $5 cardinal successful Intel and to usage the institution for customized information halfway CPUs. Intel besides joined Elon Musk's Terafab task arsenic a strategical spouse alongside SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla. And earlier this month, the institution was reported to person reached a preliminary statement for Intel to manufacture immoderate of Apple's chips -- a notable ballot of assurance fixed Apple's long-running reliance connected Taiwan Semiconductor for its astir precocious silicon. The U.S. government, meanwhile, holds astir a 10% involvement successful Intel.