Incumbent x86 chipmaker
Appears in 9 stories
Testing ACM tools for its 14A node at CHIPS-subsidized U.S. fabs while facing political backlash
Intel is racing to regain its chipmaking crown with a 14A process backed by billions in U.S. subsidies. In mid-December 2025, Reuters revealed the company had been test-driving critical tools from ACM Research, a China-rooted equipment maker whose Shanghai and Korean units sit on a U.S. export blacklist.
Updated Yesterday
Defending data center share against Arm-based challengers
For 35 years, Arm Holdings sold blueprints, not chips. Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia and Amazon paid Arm to license its processor designs, then made the silicon themselves. On May 6, 2026, Arm formalized a different future: a $15 billion direct chip-sales business by fiscal 2031, anchored by an in-house data center processor called the Arm AGI CPU. Customer demand for the chip has already doubled to more than $2 billion for fiscal years 2027–2028 since the March 24 launch, and an IBM collaboration announced in April extended the AGI CPU's reach toward enterprise mainframes.
Updated May 7
Released Loihi 3 neuromorphic chip for commercial deployment (January 2026)
Scientists at Germany's Jülich Research Centre demonstrated in mid-January 2026 that Europe's most powerful supercomputer can simulate 20 billion spiking neurons—matching the scale of the human cerebral cortex. The team plans to combine this capability with anatomical brain data to run full-cortex simulations, a technical milestone that has eluded researchers since the field's founding in the 1980s.
Updated Apr 23
18A in high-volume production; foundry backlog exceeds $15B; stock up ~76% YTD in 2026
Intel's foundry strategy, once anchored by a single high-profile Apple deal, has accumulated a roster of the world's most demanding chip buyers in a matter of weeks. In early April 2026, Intel signed on as the primary foundry partner for Terafab — a $25 billion artificial-intelligence semiconductor venture backed by Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI — and formalized a multi-year AI infrastructure deal with Google to manufacture Xeon processors and co-develop custom data-center chips for Google Cloud. Separate reports confirmed Intel Foundry had also secured contracts to build Microsoft's Maia 2 AI processor and custom AI fabric chips for Amazon Web Services. The common thread: Intel's 18A manufacturing process, which reached high-volume production at its Arizona fab in late January 2026 with yields above 60%.
Potential partner; cautionary precedent for fab economics
Every company designing custom artificial intelligence chips today — Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft — pays someone else to manufacture them. Tesla just announced it will build and operate its own semiconductor fabrication plant, a $20 billion facility called TeraFab targeting the 2-nanometer process node, the most advanced manufacturing technology in existence. No company without decades of chipmaking experience has ever attempted this.
Updated Mar 21
Top corporate contributor to the Linux kernel by commit volume
Linux kernel 7.0 is the first major version number change since 6.0 arrived in October 2022, and the software that quietly runs the majority of the world's servers, all 500 of the fastest supercomputers, and roughly 70% of the world's smartphones is getting two significant upgrades at once: the Rust programming language is now a permanent part of the kernel after a three-year experiment, and early support for Intel's Nova Lake and AMD's Zen 6 processors is being baked in before either chip has shipped.
Updated Mar 9
Building world's largest neuromorphic hardware platforms
For decades, simulating the physics of airplane wings, nuclear weapons, or weather systems required warehouse-sized supercomputers consuming megawatts of power. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have now demonstrated that brain-inspired neuromorphic chips can solve these same equations—the partial differential equations underlying nearly all physics simulations—with a fraction of the energy.
Updated Feb 14
Matching $1,000 for U.S. employees' children
The United States has never offered universal investment accounts to children. Starting July 4, 2026, every American born between 2025 and 2028 will receive $1,000 from the Treasury Department deposited into a stock market index fund—accessible at age 18 for education, homebuying, or starting a business. Over 1 million families enrolled in the program's first week.
Updated Jan 31
Achieved 18A manufacturing milestone with Panther Lake launch but faces yield challenges and supply constraints; foundry gaining traction with Microsoft partnership
Intel just shipped its first client processors built on 18A, the most advanced semiconductor process ever made in America. The Core Ultra Series 3 chips, unveiled January 5 at CES 2026, went on sale globally January 27 with over 200 PC designs promising 60% faster performance and 27-hour battery life. Early reviews praised the Arc B390 integrated graphics reaching 160-220fps in AAA games—performance rivaling discrete Nvidia GPUs in thin laptops. Dell revived its XPS laptop line with Panther Lake chips, HP committed to OMEN gaming laptops, and Asus called its new Zephyrus G14 'the future of gaming laptops.' Intel's stock initially surged 15% in early January on Panther Lake optimism, then spiked another 10% on January 9 when President Trump praised CEO Lip-Bu Tan at the White House, revealing the U.S. government's August 2025 investment had doubled in value to nearly $19 billion—making the federal government Intel's largest shareholder. But the euphoria collapsed January 23 when Intel reported Q4 2025 earnings: despite beating revenue estimates at $13.7 billion, Tan warned of supply shortages and below-target yields. The stock crashed 17% in its worst day since August 2024, erasing the January gains.
Updated Jan 30
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