rises 20% because the markets are rewarding its future, not its present

On Thursday night, Intel released its financial results of the first quarter of 2026: the company has had net losses of 3.7 billion dollars on revenues of 13.6 billion. It seems like a dire outcome, but investors caused the stock to rise 20% in the hours after markets closed. The paradox is just an illusion, because this surprising response from the markets is a sign of the confidence that investors now have. they have in Intel.

Bad numbers, but less than it seems. Analysts expected Intel to earn $2.5 billion this quarter, but the end result was just the opposite. In fact, it was $6.2 billion short of that hope. However, much of these losses are due to two separate factors:

1. Mobileye: Intel bought this company in 2017 and when Mobileye went public in 2022, it was given an acquisition value. This quarter Mobileye’s capitalization fell and that has been reflected in Intel’s global losses.
2. US Government: when the American government bought 10% of Intel via the Chips Act, part of that agreement included shares, and that financial asset has also lost value.

In both cases, in reality the losses have not been money that Intel has paid, but rather an accounting variation in the value of those assets.

But the real business is another story. Without those accounting charges, we are looking at the sixth consecutive quarter in which Intel beats its own revenue estimates. Not only that: the forecast for the second quarter is between 13,800 and 14,800 million in revenue, which clearly exceeds the 13,000 that the market expected. If Wall Street was optimistic, Intel is even more so, and that caused that 20% rise ““aftermarket” on the stock market: investors were not celebrating past results, but rather they bet on the futures.

The numbers that matter. The PC chip division brought in $7.7 billion, 1% in a flat market. Data centers and AI grew 22% year-on-year thanks to demand for Xeon chips for inference: there Intel is still relevant and may become even more so. And then there’s Intel Foundry, the third-party manufacturing business that is the company’s riskiest and most strategic bet, and which grew 16% even though most of its revenue came from manufacturing its own chips. The ongoing transformation is there, but it’s still green, so hopes are high that both AI and Foundry will go further soon.

The Yahoo! chart Finance makes it clear: from yesterday’s $66, today the stock will suddenly rise to around $85, a brutal rise.

Waiting for node 18A. Optimism is also very focused on manufacturing node 18Awhich is technically comparable to TSMC’s 2nm process. The new Arizona factory is already up and running and the yields —the ratio of valid chips per wafer— is managing to be above Intel’s internal forecasts. There is a catch here: the only client of this node for now is Intel itself, and no large external company has signed contracts to manufacture with said technology. The evolution of that node is node 14A, and here there is good news for Intel, because Tesla has already placed orders. It is expected that this node will be able to attract more contracts in the second half of 2026 and that this will mean accelerated growth by 2027. But it is just that: a hope.

Alliances help. In recent months we have seen how Intel has been gaining strength thanks to various alliances. NVIDIA bought about 4% of Intel in September 2025, and Google too advertisement a multi-year collaboration. Intel is also one of the partners in Elon Musk’s new megaproject, Terafab. The strategy of Lip-Bu Tan, the CEO of Intel, involves using capacity both internal and external to meet the demand. It’s an important message that shows the company is no longer insisting it can do everything alone.

The geopolitical argument. There is a reason why the US government has 10% of Intel and why the Chips Act “funneled” billions of dollars to its factories. AMD designs cutting-edge chips but relies on TSMC to manufacture them. GlobalFoundries, the company that was born from the spin-off of AMD factories in 2009, has facilities in New York and Vermont but has specialized in mature nodes, those that go into cars, industrial equipment and defense chips, not in the frontier processors that AI needs. TSMC is building factories in Arizonabut it is still a Taiwanese company with its engineering concentrated in Taiwan

American hope. These are the reasons why Intel has become the only US-based company that can manufacture chips in the most advanced nodes on American soil. If tensions between the US and China continue to escalate, Intel would be the only option to avoid Asian dependence. This does not guarantee that the business will work, but it does guarantee political and institutional support while this transformation lasts.

But. All those hopes have to face current realities. The manufacturing plant business lost $2.4 billion (annualized it would be $10 billion). 18A yields are better than expected, but They are not without problems. and they are only being used by Intel itself. The company also faces AMD in the data center segment (not to mention NVIDIA and hyperscaler chips), and therefore still has enormous challenges to overcome.

Image | Intel

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