Intel’s latest earnings suggest the AI infrastructure boom is finally paying off for more than just GPU makers.
The majority of its growth was in the Data Center and AI segment, which reported a 59% increase year-on-year to $6.2 billion in revenue. Intel’s Foundry business also had a notable 30% increase, although it still primarily manufactures Intel’s own product divisions.
Intel was not part of the original component rush when Nvidia and others surged in value, as GPUs and AI accelerators started to be hoarded by data center operators and AI companies. But as component supply across the entire data center stack became strained in 2026, Intel and other component suppliers further down the list of importance are starting to see serious uplift.
As one of the main suppliers of CPUs, Intel could see sustained revenue increases as more data centers come online. Amazon, Apple, and other companies have their own custom Arm-based CPUs built by TSMC, but data centers operated by neoclouds and vendors without custom chips will be in the market for Intel.
Data center spending has almost doubled in two years, with Gartner’s worldwide IT spending forecast estimating $653 billion in data center spend in 2026, up from $333 billion in 2024. Hyperscalers, neoclouds, and first-party data center operations are accelerating, as the demand for compute capacity continues to increase.
For Intel, total revenue reached $16.1 billion, an increase of 25%. It forecast that revenue for the next period would be between $15.8 billion and $16.8 billion, well ahead of the average investor range of $15.1 billion.
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Intel Foundry sees growth, but most of it internal
Even though the company still sees most of its foundry revenue from internal divisions, Intel has made some progress in its manufacturing capabilities, recently becoming the first chipmaker to add ASML’s High-NA EUV technology to its foundries. This was used to produce Intel’s Panther Lake chips, and Intel is offering this service to customers.
Apple is reportedly in discussions with Intel about moving some of its manufacturing, at least in the US, to Intel. This has been partly pushed by the Trump Administration, in an effort to get production of critical products like chips back into the US. It is also a move by Apple to reduce its reliance on TSMC, which primarily operates in Taiwan.
Nvidia has made a similar bet on Intel, investing $5 billion into the company with the potential to access its foundry business in the future. Nvidia, like Apple, uses TSMC for the vast majority of its chip manufacturing, but may see Intel as an alternative for certain chipmaking and to have a supplier in the US.
AWS, Microsoft, and the US Department of Defense have all been confirmed as customers in the Intel foundry business, with Tesla, Broadcom, and Nvidia in the testing and evaluation phase. If it can book some of these onto major manufacturing deals, the foundry business could quickly shift from an internal service to a major supplier of chips in the US.
For businesses, Intel’s push to become a true foundry player could lead to increased capacity for chip manufacturing and also reduce the bottlenecks faced by companies solely using TSMC.
Intel still trails TSMC in contract manufacturing and Nvidia in AI hardware, but its latest results suggest the AI infrastructure buildout is becoming a rising tide for the broader semiconductor industry. If cloud providers and enterprise customers continue expanding data center capacity, Intel could benefit not only as a CPU supplier but increasingly as a domestic manufacturing partner.
Related News: Intel recently became the first chipmaker to manufacture processors using ASML’s High-NA EUV lithography, deploying the advanced technology for its upcoming Panther Lake chips as it pushes to strengthen its foundry business and compete with TSMC.