Intel Corporation designs, develops, manufactures, markets, sells, and services computing and related end products and services in the United States, Ireland, Israel, and internationally. It operates through three segments: CCG, DCAI, and Intel Foundry. The company offers client computing products such as CPUs, GPUs, edge computing, and connectivity; data center and AI products including server CPUs, discrete GPUs, and networking; and semiconductors comprising wafer fabrication, substrates, and related services. It also provides driving assistance and self-driving solutions, and develops multi-beam mask writing tools. Products are sold through sales organizations, distributors, resellers, retailers, and OEM partners, serving original equipment manufacturers, original design manufacturers, cloud service providers, and other manufacturers and service providers. Intel has a strategic collaboration with Infosys Limited to develop a multi-layer AI fabric. Incorporated in 1968, it is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
Micron and Intel CEOs Warn Memory Chip Shortages Could Last Through 2027
Micron Technology and Intel CEOs cautioned that memory chip shortages and higher prices could persist through 2027, with Micron's leadership indicating on a recent call that supply constraints may only start to ease meaningfully from 2028 onward. Intel's CEO echoed the outlook for extended tightness in DRAM and NAND availability, pointing to heavy AI and data center demand. Micron Technology designs and produces memory and storage hardware used in everything from smartphones and PCs to data centers, so long running tightness in DRAM and NAND supply directly touches the products it sells into these markets. As one of the larger US based chip manufacturers by scale, with a reported market value of about $1.1 trillion, its comments on supply conditions can influence how investors think about capacity planning across the wider semiconductor sector. The clearest test of this read will be how Micron's long term customer agreements and utilization plans look through 2027, especially whether the company keeps reporting high take or pay coverage across its AI oriented memory output as new fabs and its 512GB DDR5 modules move toward volume production in the second half of 2027.
Micron Gains 1.3% as Intel CEO Sees Memory Scarcity Lasting Into 2027
Micron Technology shares rose about 1.3% to $990.14 Friday morning after Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said memory prices have surged fivefold to sevenfold and that supply constraints will persist into next year. Tan's comments reinforce the tight memory market now driving Micron's profitability, with the company's latest reported quarter delivering an 84.6% GAAP gross margin and management guiding the following quarter to roughly 86%. At $990.14, Micron trades 54.71% above its $640 GuruFocus GF Value, a premium that raises the bar for the company to convert the pricing windfall into durable cash flows before supply eventually catches up.
Intel CEO Warns Memory Prices Up 5x to 7x as Shortage Threatens 2027
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned this week that memory prices have jumped 5x to 7x and now account for roughly 75% of the cost of some lower-end phones and laptops, cautioning the shortage could deepen in 2027. Tan told investors the industry faces one of the most severe supply constraints in its history across leading-edge logic, silicon wafers, memory, and subscripts, and said these shortages will persist for the foreseeable future. Intel is pivoting production toward data-center CPUs and now guides 2026 capital expenditure above $20 billion, with 2027 spending set to run significantly higher. Micron Technology echoed the outlook, saying it sees tightness continuing beyond 2027, aligned with SK hynix flagging 2027 as potentially the industry's worst supply year. Micron's $100 billion in take-or-pay remaining performance obligations and $22 billion in customer deposits and letters of credit lock in floor pricing above prior peak margins, while its fiscal third-quarter gross margin hit 84.9% on DRAM pricing gains in the low 60s percentage range and NAND pricing in the mid-80s percentage range.
UMC Shares Surge 250% as AI Revenue Push and 2026 Estimate Jump Fuel Bull Case
United Microelectronics Corporation shares have soared 250.1% over the past year, far outpacing the industry's 25.8% gain, as improving foundry demand and AI exposure drive optimism. The company's 22/28-nanometer nodes contributed 37% of second-quarter revenues, with 22nm sales hitting another record, and management expects third-quarter wafer shipments to rise by a high single-digit percentage sequentially with capacity utilization exceeding 90%. UMC expects AI-related revenues to approach $300 million in 2026 and exceed $1 billion within three years, and it recently began mass-production delivery of silicon photonics wafers from its 12-inch Singapore facility, with plans to open its own 12-inch silicon photonics platform to broader customers in 2027. Its collaboration with Intel on a 12nm process platform is expected to begin production in Arizona in 2027. The 2026 earnings estimate now stands at $1.23 per share, up 75.7% over the past 60 days, and the stock carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
SK Hynix in talks with Intel to make memory chips in the US
SK Hynix is in preliminary talks with Intel to find ways to produce memory chips in the United States, according to an in-depth report by Reuters. The first option is that SK Hynix could seek to lease part of Intel's large chip manufacturing plant in Ohio. Another possible option is the creation of a joint venture between Intel, SK Hynix and a group of major cloud service providers. The move comes amid a severe shortage of memory chips, driven by soaring demand from artificial intelligence and data center technologies worldwide, and it also marks a political victory for the US government under the leadership of Donald Trump, which has pressured chipmakers to move production to the United States. However, the biggest obstacle may come from the South Korean government, since SK Hynix's core products, including DRAM chips, NAND Flash and advanced memory chips such as High-Bandwidth Memory, are all classified as national core technologies. South Korea's Ministry of Trade therefore states that any transfer of technology or establishment of production bases abroad must undergo strict review under the Industrial Technology Protection Act. Meanwhile, insider sources say that building and operating a semiconductor plant in the United States costs far more than in South Korea, including construction costs, labor costs and transportation costs. SK Hynix said it is considering various measures, including building additional production bases, but stressed that everything is still at an early stage and no final decision has been made. Intel declined to comment, saying it was only speculation, while confirming that it will continue to invest in Ohio according to its existing plans.
Fed raises rates for first time in 3 years to 3.75-4.00%, dragging Dow down 631 points
The US Federal Reserve, or Fed, raised interest rates by 0.25% to a range of 3.75% to 4.00%, with a unanimous 12-0 vote by the Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC. This is the first hike since July 2023, and the Fed signaled further increases this year in its fight against high inflation driven by surging crude oil prices amid the Iran-US war. The rate hike dragged the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 631.21 points, or 1.21%, to close at 51,461.90. The S&P 500 closed at 7,551.81, down 33.92 points, or 0.45%, while the Nasdaq closed at 25,978.42, down 3.15 points, or 0.01%. Technology stocks recovered, with semiconductor shares up 0.6%, the first gain since the AI company's executives warned against slowing development. Intel jumped 4% after reports that South Korea's SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about manufacturing memory chips in the United States, news that also lifted SK Hynix's US-listed shares by 0.6%. As for the Thai stock market, the index is expected to see a short-term technical rebound after the Fed's decision to raise rates came in as expected. The stock to watch today is GULF, which is investing more than 100 billion baht to develop a Data Center Park with a capacity of over 1,000 megawatts, with a plan expected to be finalized within this year, while accelerating the development of electricity and water infrastructure to serve major customers.
Generac Surges 18% on $8 Billion Amazon Data Center Generator Deal
Generac agreed to supply up to $8 billion worth of backup generators for Amazon's data centers, sending its shares up 18% and making it the top performer on the S&P 500. The company also issued a warrant for a stake in itself, according to a securities filing, and analysts said the stock could double in price over the next 12 to 18 months. The broader market closed higher, with the Dow Jones industrial average adding about 300 points, or roughly 0.6%, the S&P 500 gaining about 86 points, or 1.2%, and the Nasdaq composite rising about 1.7%. Intel shares climbed more than 7.5% after South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix said it might team up with the company, following a Reuters report that it could lease part of Intel's long-planned Ohio chip facility or form a venture, though SK Hynix said no decision has been made. Among decliners, Paramount Skydance fell more than 4.6% as a Barclays analyst argued its proposed merger with Warner Brothers could introduce massive financial and operational risks and predicted the company would eventually split up, while Fluence Energy tumbled 15% after cutting its revenue forecast, which analysts attributed to production issues at its Houston facility.
Intel Posts MLPerf Inference Gains Across Xeon 6 and Arc Pro GPUs
Intel reported performance gains in its latest MLPerf Inference v6.1 results across Intel Xeon 6 processors and Intel Arc Pro B-series GPUs. Intel Xeon 6980P processors delivered 2.4x higher Llama 3.1 8B Server throughput and 56% higher Offline throughput than MLPerf v6.0 on the same hardware setup, while customer and partner results rose from 29 to 39, with Oracle, Red Hat, Quanta Cloud Technology and Supermicro making their first submissions. Intel expanded Xeon 6 participation from two to five processor models, lifting CPU inference results from 24 to 35, and its Arc Pro B70 GPUs supported workloads including Llama 2 70B, gpt-oss-120B and Whisper, with a four-GPU system offering 128GB of Video Random Access Memory and Server performance up 36% and Offline performance up 27% versus MLPerf v6.0. Intel also co-developed results for the new end-to-end retrieval-augmented generation benchmark, using a system that paired a Xeon 6787P processor with four Arc Pro B70 GPUs to split the workload between CPU and GPUs. Intel faces competition from Qualcomm, which is expanding into AI data-center infrastructure through its Dragonfly platform, and from AMD, which is strengthening its AI infrastructure with the Helios platform.
Intel Jumps 8% on Report of SK Hynix Memory Talks for Ohio Site
Intel and SK Hynix are in early discussions about producing memory chips together on U.S. soil for the first time, according to unconfirmed Reuters reports, sending Intel stock up 8% to $109.03 and SK Hynix up 5% to $183.57 in Thursday morning trading. Reuters reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions, that the two companies are weighing two structures: a lease of part of Intel's Ohio chipmaking complex, or a joint venture with Intel and major cloud computing firms to lock in memory supply. Neither company has confirmed a deal; SK Hynix said it is exploring options to strengthen global competitiveness and that nothing has been finalized, while Intel declined to comment on what it called speculation. Ohio's project was announced as the world's largest chipmaking complex, and its fabs have slipped years past the original schedule, leaving committed capital sitting idle, so a tenant filling Ohio capacity would convert an idle plant into a revenue line for Intel. Micron Technology rose 6% to $979.25 and the Roundhill Memory ETF gained 4% to $57.67, a move traders attributed to memory scarcity and stronger group pricing ahead of any competitive consequence, even though a U.S. memory fab by SK Hynix would narrow Micron's domestic advantage under the CHIPS Act. One gating risk sits in Seoul: advanced memory can be classified in South Korea as national core technology, which triggers a government review of any transfer abroad and could block an Intel-SK Hynix memory fab deal regardless of what the two companies agree between themselves.
Fed raises rates for first time in 3 years, Dow closes down 631 points
The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in more than three years, to a range of 3.75-4.00%, by a unanimous 12-0 vote, and signaled it may raise rates once more this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 51,461.78, down 631.21 points, or 1.21%. The S&P 500 closed at 7,551.81, down 33.92 points, or 0.45%, and the Nasdaq closed at 25,978.42, down 3.15 points, or 0.01%. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said the US economy has strengthened since the previous meeting, but inflation has shown almost no sign of slowing, having remained above the 2% target for five years. By sector, technology stocks posted the biggest gains among the 11 groups calculated in the S&P 500, while energy closed down 3% on lower crude oil prices, with Chevron and Exxon Mobil falling 2.9% and 3.5% respectively. Intel shares jumped 4.0% after reports that South Korea's SK Hynix is in talks with the company about manufacturing memory chips in the United States, and Boeing fell 3.7% after Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said it will take longer than expected to restore 737 MAX production capacity to 47 aircraft per month.
Bank of America Forecasts Semiconductor Market Nearly Doubling to $3.2 Trillion by 2030
Bank of America forecasts the global semiconductor market will nearly double to $3.2 trillion by 2030 from $1.7 trillion in 2026, citing AI infrastructure, memory and data-center demand that remains far stronger than recent fears suggest. Analysts led by Vivek Arya wrote that despite rising concerns about a potential AI infrastructure and investment slowdown, they see no signs of slowing in customer orders, long-term agreements, capacity commitments or semiconductor pricing. The bank pointed to Nvidia B200 rental pricing at $5.72 per hour, up consistently over the past two months and less than 10% below its March peak of roughly $6.10, while AMD has also indicated it is not seeing weakening customer orders. Within the total, memory is expected to remain the biggest growth engine, with sales rising to $1.8 trillion by 2030 from $937 billion in 2026, core semiconductors projected to increase to $1.35 trillion from $739 billion, server-related sales jumping to $848 billion from $359 billion, and wafer-fabrication-equipment spending more than doubling to $359.8 billion from $155.9 billion. BofA sees Nvidia and AMD as resilient compute plays, Marvell in networking, and Analog Devices and onsemi in analog, while Micron, Lam Research, Applied Materials and Intel could also outperform if sector momentum improves; the key risk is whether hyperscalers eventually slow AI capital spending.
Nvidia Leads Q2 Chip Earnings as Group Beats Revenue Estimates by 6.3%
Nvidia reported revenues of $96.22 billion for the second quarter, up 106% year on year and 4.2% above analysts' expectations, as the nine processors and graphics chips stocks tracked in the group collectively beat revenue consensus by 6.3% and guided next-quarter revenue 6.8% above estimates. Intel posted the strongest quarter in the group, with revenues of $16.13 billion, up 25.4% year on year and 11.7% ahead of expectations, though its shares are down 3.2% since reporting and trade at $97.06. Qualcomm was the weakest, with revenues of $9.95 billion, down 4% year on year but still 3% above expectations, while its stock has risen 20.5% since results to $187.57. Lattice Semiconductor reported revenues of $201.1 million, up 62.2% year on year and 8.6% above expectations, and posted the highest guidance raise among its peers, yet its shares are down 23.5% at $105.51. Penguin Solutions reported revenues of $478.7 million, up 47.6% year on year and 17.5% above expectations, the biggest analyst estimate beat of the group, but its stock is down 24.4% at $47.41. On average, share prices across the group are down 3.6% since the latest earnings results, while Nvidia shares are up 1.3% since reporting and trade at $212.38.
SK hynix in Talks With Intel to Make Memory Chips in US
SK hynix is reportedly in talks with Intel to use the latter's facilities to manufacture memory chips in the US for the first time, according to Reuters. The report, discussed on Yahoo Finance with RBC Capital Markets head of derivatives strategy Amy Wu Silverman, comes as the software and semiconductor industries diverge sharply over AI risks. Silverman compared the current moment for software to the "SASpocalypse" of February, when investors feared Salesforce and other software names would be disrupted by AI, and likened it to newspaper companies in 1998 facing the internet boom. In a study of about 35 newspaper, CD, record and phone-book companies as the internet boom began, she found that on average investors still made money because many were taken private or merged, that some adapted like the New York Times, and that even those that ultimately collapsed, such as Barnes and Noble, offered local highs and time to react. She said the divergence between software, tracked by IGV, and semiconductors, tracked by SMH, is likely to continue along a similar path.
SK Hynix in Talks With Intel on US Memory Chip Manufacturing
SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about a deal that would see the South Korean memory chip maker manufacture memory chips in the US for the first time, according to a Reuters report. SK Hynix responded that it is exploring options to boost its global competitiveness but said no deal has been made with Intel. Intel shares rose about 4% in premarket trading, making it the most actively traded stock, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has urged SK Hynix and other Asian chipmakers to start making chips in the US to help address the global shortage. Separately, JB Hunt shares slid 11% after the trucking company flagged rising costs and issued a rare earnings warning at a Morgan Stanley conference, saying it expects second quarter to third quarter earnings to drop 5 to 10% and that higher costs from ramped-up hiring, bigger signing bonuses and raises will cost it $25 million more in the third quarter than in the second quarter. Brookfield Capital agreed to buy Australian plumbing products company Reliance Worldwide in a deal valuing the company at $2.8 billion, or $3.38 a share.
Intel, SK Hynix Rise on Reported US Memory Chip Talks; Vodafone Falls
Intel shares rose 5% and SK Hynix gained 3% following a report that South Korea's SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about potentially manufacturing memory chips in the U.S. for the first time. One scenario would involve SK Hynix leasing part of Intel's planned Ohio chipmaking facility, while another could involve a joint venture with Intel and major cloud companies seeking to secure memory supplies. The discussions remain exploratory, with no decisions made, and potential opposition from Seoul could pose a hurdle, particularly if advanced memory technologies such as HBM or DRAM are involved; SK Hynix said it is reviewing measures, including additional production bases, but that no matters have been determined at this stage. FTAI Aviation gained 2% after authorizing a new $500M share repurchase program, funded with cash on its balance sheet and running through September 30, 2029 unless completed earlier. Vodafone fell 2% after reports indicated the British telecom giant could face up to €1.1B ($1.27B) in potential earnings losses from the sale of Patrick Drahi's 50% stake in the German broadband joint venture OXG Glasfaser, with Société Générale agreeing earlier this month to acquire Drahi's stake but not assume his deferred payment commitments.
Nvidia in Talks to Invest Up to $10 Billion in Anthropic IPO
Nvidia is in advanced talks to invest up to US$10b in Anthropic's planned IPO, according to people familiar with the discussions. The chipmaker is also exploring a potential acquisition of AI platform Hugging Face for up to US$14b, a deal that would expand its software footprint. Both moves would extend Nvidia's role beyond AI hardware into deeper capital partnerships and ownership stakes in key model and tooling providers. Backing a major model provider while already supplying compute would shift Nvidia from supplier to financial partner, while owning a widely used open-source hub could strengthen CUDA-centric workflows and differentiate it further from AMD and Intel. The Hugging Face discussions also sharpen existing risks around regulatory scrutiny, customer vertical integration and energy-intensive AI factory buildouts.
Intel-Backed Chipmaker Altera Files Confidentially for IPO
Altera Corporation has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering. The San Jose-based programmable chipmaker has not yet determined the number of common shares to be offered or the price range, and the timing remains subject to regulatory review and prevailing market conditions. The filing comes just one year after parent company Intel Corporation carved out the unit, selling a 51% controlling stake to private equity firm Silver Lake in a transaction that valued Altera at $8.75 billion, with Middle Eastern state fund MGX later joining as a co-investor and Intel retaining a 49% minority holding. An offering would establish Altera as the largest pure-play provider of field-programmable gate arrays, chips that can be reprogrammed after production to adapt to evolving computational demands, positioning the technology as a core building block for artificial intelligence infrastructure, industrial automation, robotics, and defense systems. For Intel, the listing advances a broader restructuring aimed at shoring up liquidity and shedding non-core assets to fund its foundry turnaround; Intel originally acquired Altera in 2015 for approximately $16.7 billion before granting the business operational autonomy.
AMD Data Center Revenue Doubles to $6.72B as Intel Posts $2.1B Foundry Loss
AMD reported second-quarter 2026 Data Center revenue of $6.72 billion, up 107% year over year, while Intel's DCAI unit grew 59% to $6.26 billion but absorbed a $2.1 billion Foundry loss. AMD's Data Center segment, which more than doubled on EPYC and Instinct demand, was the standout as cloud and enterprise server sales each grew more than 70%, and CEO Lisa Su called it the fifth consecutive quarter of record server CPU revenue. Intel's DCAI growth was its strongest server growth on record, but a $12.53 billion non-cash charge tied to the CHIPS Act escrow drove a GAAP loss of $2.16 per share, even as non-GAAP EPS of $0.42 beat the $0.22 estimate. On the AI systems side, AMD's Helios rackscale platform pairs Venice CPUs with MI450 GPUs and has drawn commitments from Anthropic for up to 2 gigawatts of MI450 plus multi-generation deals with OpenAI and Meta. AMD guided third-quarter revenue to roughly $13 billion, up 41% year over year, and expects Data Center to more than double again in 2027, while Intel guided third-quarter revenue to $15.8 billion to $16.8 billion with non-GAAP EPS of $0.38. AMD's non-GAAP operating margin rose to 27% from 12%, and both stocks have already rallied sharply year to date, with AMD up 130.39% and Intel up 163.39%.
Nvidia Enters Full Production of Vera CPUs, Targets Intel and AMD Server Market
Nvidia has entered full production of its Vera family of CPUs, a move that positions the AI chip leader to challenge Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in the server CPU market. In its fiscal Q2 2027 report, Nvidia revealed that its Grace family of CPUs had already generated $5 billion in sales over the trailing 12-month period. The company projects that its data center CPU revenue will more than double from this fiscal year to the next fiscal year, with the rollout of its next-generation processors playing a huge role in the growth. Nvidia is pairing the Vera CPUs with its top-of-the-line Vera Rubin GPUs and also selling the hardware as a stand-alone product, and it says the Vera hardware delivers performance and efficiency that significantly exceed those of any other data center CPU in key areas. Nvidia is often projected to command more than 90% of the market for advanced GPUs used for AI training, with estimates of its share of the less computationally intensive inference category ranging between 60% and 75%.
AI pause calls sink Nvidia, AMD, Intel; OpenAI hints at IPO delay
Artificial intelligence stocks tumbled Monday after leaders of the AI revolution called for a coordinated slowdown in building more powerful AI systems. Over the weekend, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," calling for an industry-wide effort to slow AI development, and executives at OpenAI, SpaceX and Microsoft echoed the concern. Semiconductor stocks bore the brunt: Nvidia fell 3% to $210.96, AMD lost 4% and Intel plunged 6%, while SoftBank Group, an OpenAI shareholder, plunged 11%. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman told Fortune it was an "ill-advised moment" for an initial public offering and said the company won't list this year, and Microsoft published a "humanist" code of conduct pledging its models "will never resist human interruption, correction, or shutdown." Anthropic reportedly disclosed its second consecutive profitable quarter on Sunday as it prepares to go public, with second-quarter revenue surging past $11.5 billion, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed AI doomsday scenarios as totally unfounded and President Trump defended his administration's light-touch regulatory approach.
Most Trump Administration Equity Stakes Fall Below Post-Deal Prices, Yahoo Finance Analysis Finds
A Yahoo Finance analysis has found that 14 of the 17 public companies that accepted government involvement ended this past week with share prices lower than the day after their deals with the Trump administration were announced. The pattern has been a significant bump around the formal announcement, high volatility afterward, and then gains given back almost as quickly as they came, with USA Rare Earth jumping over 80% in five trading days around its January deal announcement before giving up all those gains and more, ending Monday at $15.71 per share, far below post-deal highs above $30. Returns for 11 of the 17 companies, measured against 10 trading days before the formal announcement, are also lower now, and the negative returns are even more pronounced given that two of the three gainers are Intel and Nippon Steel, which gave the government a golden share with outsized voting rights but not an equity stake, while the third is MP Materials, which secured a deal in July 2025. The administration has taken stakes in more than 30 companies, recently adding its 32nd, a privately held oil driller called North American Blue Energy Partners that obtained 100-year leases on land in Venezuela holding an estimated 65 billion barrels of oil, and the portfolio now spans quantum computing, semiconductors, oil drilling, steel, nuclear energy, and rare earth mineral companies. Cato Institute policy analyst Tad DeHaven, who has studied the government stakes, said it certainly looks like a sugar high, adding that there looks to be a short-term benefit but that in the long term it comes down to fundamentals. The government's stake in Intel has jumped from an estimated $8.9 billion when the deal was struck to more than $50 billion today, with Intel stock closing Monday at $97.19, down over 5% on the day but still more than quadruple its price in August 2025 just before the deal was announced.
Intel Could Gain as AI Spending Shifts From Training to Inference
A September 14 selloff treated slower frontier AI development as bad news for chips, but Reuters Breakingviews argued that a moderation in giant model-training runs could redirect part of this year's roughly $1 trillion AI investment toward inference, where existing models answer queries and run agents. That shift would create a different contest for Intel and Nvidia, because inference does not erase GPUs but broadens the bill of materials. Intel's opportunity is the server CPU, since production AI applications need orchestration, memory, networking and general-purpose compute around accelerators, and Intel reported $6.3 billion of Data Center and AI revenue in its latest quarter, up 59% year over year. Execution remains the risk: Intel is spending heavily to rebuild manufacturing leadership and still generated negative adjusted free cash flow in its latest quarter, and inference growth helps only if Intel keeps enough share and margin against AMD, Arm-based CPUs and specialized accelerators. Nvidia remains the strongest counterargument to a simple rotation thesis, since its GPUs run both training and inference and CUDA plus newer inference-focused systems give it a path to monetize deployed AI even if frontier training slows, with the downside relative rather than existential. Insider Monkey's database counted 138 hedge funds holding Intel in Q2 2026, up from 112 in Q1, with AQR Capital Management owning 10,742,567 shares after trimming its position 7%, while Nvidia rose to 285 funds from 275 and Fisher Asset Management increased its stake 3% to 90,935,947 shares, filings that predate the September 14 safety-driven market reaction. Intel had 152,248,752 shares sold short on August 31, equal to 3.02% of float, with 1.69 days to cover.
Tech stocks slide as AI bosses call for slowdown in development
US tech stocks fell sharply on Monday after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called for tech companies to reduce the speed of AI development, a call backed by OpenAI boss Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Google DeepMind chairman Sir Demis Hassabis. The Nasdaq Composite dropped as much as 1.3pc to 25,992.54, with Sandisk, Intel and Micron all falling more than 6pc and Nvidia, the world's largest company by market value, down 3.8pc; the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as 0.4pc to 52,385.52 and the S&P 500 declined 0.8pc to 7,597.05. Donald Trump rejected the calls, writing on Truth Social that there is a "SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers," while Vice-President JD Vance called the industry's requests for regulation "a Trojan horse." In Europe, the Cac 40 in France, the Dax in Germany and the Ibex 35 in Spain each fell 0.6pc, with Germany's Infineon down 7.2pc and Dutch companies ASML and ASMI losing 4.8pc and 8.1pc respectively, while the FTSE 100 rose 0.6pc as software stocks including Sage, Relx and London Stock Exchange Group gained. OpenAI separately called on the UK Government to introduce mandatory safety rules for major AI developers, with the AI Security Institute playing a central role in third-party testing, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called for a global "technology stability board" modelled on the Financial Stability Board.
Verizon Adds Nine Members to 6G Innovation Forum, Reports ISAC and AI Trials
Verizon announced the expansion of its 6G Innovation Forum with nine new members and reported successful pre-standard field trials of Integrated Sensing and Communication and an AI Sports Companion prototype. Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Intel, Keysight Technologies, MediaTek, NVIDIA, Palo Alto Networks, Rohde & Schwarz and VIAVI Solutions have officially joined the forum, which was launched last year and already includes founding members Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia, Meta and Qualcomm Technologies. In one trial staged at a major international soccer celebration in Dallas, Texas, Verizon and Samsung used a single 5G base station and 40MHz of CBRS spectrum to track radio variations from six Samsung Galaxy smartphones, with Samsung's AI RAN and edge AI platform Network in a Server generating real-time crowd-density heatmaps on commercial phones and a tablet. In a second trial at Qualcomm's San Diego campus, the companies used 100 to 400MHz of millimeter-wave spectrum and four synchronized Transmission and Reception Points to track an airborne drone and moving ground vehicles while maintaining uninterrupted 5G Standalone communications to a phone user on the ground. Verizon also showcased a prototype AI Sports Companion application running on the Verizon Edge Network with Meta AI glasses, a locally optimized Small Language Model, an NVIDIA DGX Spark and statistics from SportsDataIO, letting users ask verbally for real-time player statistics, live score interpretations and game-winning probabilities. Verizon said forum members will continue sharing learnings from future demonstrations involving ISAC, digital twins, robotics, AI and advanced wearables, and it views the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as the ultimate interim proving ground on the road to commercial 6G deployment, supported by its dedicated 6G Lab already established in the host city.
Nvidia and chip stocks slide as AI leaders call for development slowdown
Nvidia stock fell 2% in premarket trading Monday as AI safety concerns rattled global tech markets, with Broadcom, Intel, and Marvell Technology dropping 3%, 5%, and 7% respectively after leaders of major artificial intelligence companies over the weekend called for a slowdown in AI development. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay Saturday contending that AI companies must pull back on advancing their most powerful models, citing the safety dangers such systems pose, and told CBS News on Sunday that the thorniest obstacle to such a proposal is uncertainty over whether China would participate. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a Saturday interview that an IPO this year would be "ill-advised," adding to uncertainty around the AI sector's near-term trajectory. Nasdaq-100 futures were down 1.5% ahead of the open, with S&P 500 futures off 0.6% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures shedding 114 points, or 0.2%, while South Korea's Kospi retreated 3.26%, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 finished down 0.81%, and Europe's pan-European Stoxx 600 index was down about 0.3%. Markets are also contending with rising oil prices, as WTI crude futures climbed 3% to trade above $103 a barrel and Brent futures rose past $108 following Saudi Arabia's decision to shut a pipeline that had been a critical conduit for crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz region, a closure that followed drone strikes by Iran-aligned militants in Iraq. The Federal Reserve opens its September policy meeting this week, with fed funds futures markets assigning about an 86% chance to a rate increase.
AI Stocks Slide Premarket as Executives Urge Slower Development
U.S. stock index futures fell sharply on Monday, with technology shares under pressure after several leading artificial intelligence executives called for a slower pace of AI development. By 05:52 ET, Dow futures had fallen 150 points, or 0.3%, S&P 500 futures had dropped 63 points, or 0.8%, and Nasdaq 100 futures had slumped 531 points, or 1.8%. Rumble shares surged as much as 28% in premarket trading after reports that Anthropic had agreed to a $13.7 billion computing contract with the company, a deal Rumble had disclosed in an August securities filing without identifying the customer. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on AI companies to slow the advancement of model capabilities in an essay posted on X on Saturday, warning that increasingly capable AI agents could create significant economic damage if misused, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI chief Elon Musk said they agree with his concerns. Nvidia fell more than 2% in premarket trading, while Meta and Amazon each dropped more than 1%, and chipmakers Intel, AMD and Marvell Technology fell nearly 6%, 5% and 6%, respectively, even as software names ServiceNow, Adobe and Workday rose about 3%, 2.5% and 2.5%. Scholar Rock shares surged 9.1% to $60.45 after the FDA approved ISEMBYLD, also known as apitegromab-mstn, as the first and only muscle-targeted treatment for spinal muscular atrophy in patients aged two and older receiving an SMN2-targeted therapy, ahead of the September 30, 2026 PDUFA deadline. Elmet Group shares jumped 30.8% after announcing a $450 million committed investment from the U.S. Department of War to accelerate domestic tungsten manufacturing, while Olema Pharmaceuticals slid 15.1% to $8.68 after AstraZeneca said its Phase 3 SERENA-4 trial of camizestrant failed to show a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival, and MARA Holdings fell 5.7% to $11.30 after JPMorgan double-downgraded the bitcoin miner to Underweight from Neutral and cut its price target to $11 from $13.
AI Stocks Slide as Amodei, Altman and Musk Back Slowing AI Development
AI-linked stocks fell across Asia, Europe and U.S. premarket trading on Monday after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a deliberate slowdown in AI capabilities development, drawing support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Nvidia fell nearly 3% in premarket trading, Intel dropped close to 6% and Micron Technology declined around 5%, while in Asia SK Hynix ended the session down more than 6% and Samsung Electronics shed more than 4%. SoftBank, one of OpenAI's largest investors, fell roughly 10% to 11% in Tokyo and South Korea's Kospi dropped 3.3%, while in Europe ASML lost between 5% and 6%, Nokia gave up roughly 8% and Infineon retreated more than 7%. Amodei published an essay on Saturday outlining a three-step plan he called pacing the frontier, which would embed third-party evaluators inside AI companies, establish shared safety benchmarks and agreed limits on how fast capabilities can advance, and eventually coordinate with governments including China. Altman posted on X that he agrees with Amodei's call, Musk wrote that Dario is right, and Altman later clarified that pacing does not mean stopping, while President Donald Trump rejected any reduction in pace on Sunday and China's Foreign Ministry described the warnings as fear mongering.
Bitcoin Surges Past $77,800 as AI Stocks Tumble on Development Slowdown Warning
Bitcoin climbed above $77,000, moving against the grain as U.S. technology and artificial intelligence stocks fell in premarket trading, after leading chief executives voiced a fresh round of concerns about the pace of AI development. Bitcoin rose about 1% over the past 24 hours to $77,800, while Ether gained 1% to $2,500. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, called on the industry to slow the pace of development to give safety measures time to catch up, a view echoed by Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, who develops Grok through xAI. Anthropic has also reportedly chosen the Nasdaq for its expected initial public offering, while Altman confirmed his company will not enter the stock market in 2026. South Korea's Kospi index fell 3%, and shares of SK Hynix, a maker of memory chips used by AI companies, dropped 6%. The Invesco QQQ ETF, which tracks the Nasdaq 100, fell 1.5%, while neocloud providers Nebius and CoreWeave declined 6% and 5% respectively. Chipmakers Sandisk and Intel each lost 5% of their value. At the same time, rising oil prices are adding pressure to the market, with Brent crude jumping more than 3% to $107 a barrel, while WTI traded above $103. Long-dated U.S. Treasury yields edged lower, with the 10-year yield just below 5% and the 30-year at 5.355%. Precious metals also retreated, with gold falling nearly 1% to around $4,300 an ounce and silver down 1.5%.
Intel Stock Jumps 10% on Reported October CPU Price Hike
Intel shares surged 10% this week after multiple outlets including DigiTimes reported the chipmaker will raise prices on some of its central processing units by 10% in October, a move Intel has not yet confirmed. The reported increase follows price hikes in the first quarter and again in July on certain products, while rival Qualcomm implemented a double-digit price increase in July. Intel closed at over $106 per share on Wednesday, September 9, as investors responded positively, though the stock now trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 88 and a forward P/E of 57. The company's third-quarter outlook calls for adjusted earnings of $0.38 per share, down from $0.41 in the second quarter, partly on higher-than-expected capital expenditures, with Intel raising its capex outlook to $20 billion for 2026. The article also highlights Sandisk, which is sold out for 2026 with $93.9 billion in contracted revenue over the next four to five years and trades at 23 times earnings and 8 times forward earnings.
Piper Sandler Starts Intel at Neutral, Citing Agentic AI CPU Demand and Foundry Valuation
Piper Sandler initiated coverage on Intel Corporation with a Neutral rating and a $110 price target on September 9, with analyst David O'Connor arguing that Agentic AI workloads are driving demand for Intel's server CPUs while supply remains limited. O'Connor expects that supply-demand imbalance to persist until around 2029-2030, a favorable backdrop for whoever holds capacity, and Piper estimates Intel's Data Center Group could deliver a high-teens revenue CAGR through 2030, enough to more than offset softness in PC and memory. Intel's Data Center and AI Segment posted $6.3 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2026, up 59% year-over-year. Piper said Intel's current share price already discounts roughly 15% of the foundry gains, a level representing an estimated one full fab module known as Fab-62 and accounting for 45% of the share price, meaning investors are already paying for a meaningful manufacturing recovery. The firm also noted upside in customer evaluations for 14A manufacturing and a recent milestone in which Intel Foundry became the first to run high-volume production using ASML's newest High-NA EUV lithography tools, while 138 hedge funds held the stock at the end of the quarter, up from 112 in the prior quarter, and short interest stood at 2.9% of the public float as of August 31, 2026.
AMD and Intel's Shared AI Instructions Win Initial GCC Compiler Support
A September 2 GCC commit added initial support for AMD and Intel's shared AI Compute Extensions, or ACE, bringing the two chipmakers' common x86 software strategy into a widely used compiler's development code. The immediate event is narrow: compiler infrastructure, followed by instruction-support commits, and it is not evidence that compatible processors have shipped or that GCC 17 is a finished release. The x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group's April whitepaper describes a common matrix-acceleration architecture shaped by both companies, and a shared instruction interface could reduce the effort needed to target matrix multiplication, which is central to many AI workloads, across future processors. For Advanced Micro Devices the bull case is an easier route for compatible future CPUs into AI-related workloads, while the risk is that a shared standard also improves Intel's appeal; for Intel the opportunity is making future x86 products more useful to developers, though standardization cannot resolve manufacturing execution, delivery and competitive pricing. Insider Monkey's tracked worksheet sample counted 164 AMD holders in Q2 2026 versus 134 in Q1, and 138 Intel holders versus 112, with the samples covering 1,006 and 1,022 managers, and at June 30 Marshall Wace held 3,898,210 AMD shares while Philippe Laffont's Coatue held 12,084,027 Intel shares. MarketBeat's August 14 settlement data put short interest at 2.47% of AMD's float and 2.69% of Intel's.
UBS Upgrades Lockheed Martin, JPMorgan Upgrades Meta in Week of Analyst Calls
UBS upgraded Lockheed Martin to Buy from Neutral, arguing accelerating missile production, rising defense spending and growth beyond the F-35 franchise could drive earnings above Wall Street expectations. Analyst Gavin Parsons expects Lockheed revenue to grow at a compound annual rate of approximately 9% through 2028, with UBS projecting revenue of $81.05 billion in 2026, $88.48 billion in 2027 and $96.13 billion in 2028, the last about 6% above consensus, and adjusted earnings of $30.69 a share in 2026, $34.50 in 2027 and $39.34 in 2028, 12% above consensus. JPMorgan upgraded Meta Platforms to Overweight from Neutral with an $820 price target, implying a 25% increase from last close, citing upside from the launch of its AI assistant and frontier models. Morgan Stanley downgraded Novo Nordisk to Underweight from Equal-weight on semaglutide loss-of-exclusivity concerns, while Northland Securities upgraded Intel to Outperform from Market Perform with a $120 price target, and UBS cut NuScale Power to Sell from Neutral with a $6 price target, slashed from $10.
Intel-Backed Kepler Claims New Memory Architecture That Could Challenge HBM
An Intel-backed startup called Kepler Computing emerged from stealth with a new memory architecture that it claims can outperform conventional high-bandwidth memory while being produced with existing semiconductor manufacturing tools. Kepler, which counts Intel among its financial backers, plans initial samples later in 2026 and production beginning in 2027, according to a Barron's report on September 10. The threat to Micron Technology is not immediate: Kepler is not shipping commercial volumes today, and Micron already has HBM4 in high-volume production for Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform, with its 36GB HBM4 product offering more than 2.8 TB/s of bandwidth. Micron has secured $22 billion of commitments from 16 strategic customers and expects supply constraints to persist beyond 2027, while hedge fund ownership of the stock rose to 184 funds in the second quarter from 154. For Intel, a successful Kepler architecture would amount to strategic optionality rather than a new earnings engine, and hedge fund ownership of Intel rose to 138 funds from 112 over the same period.
JPMorgan Ends Lending to Aschenbrenner's AI Fund After Record Losses
JPMorgan Chase & Co has terminated its prime brokerage lending relationship with Leopold Aschenbrenner's hedge fund, Situational Awareness, following record-setting losses tied to a broader downturn in artificial intelligence stocks, according to the Financial Times. The fund suffered the largest dollar loss in hedge fund industry history during a sharp July sell-off, losing 67% of its assets that month before offloading the bulk of its public market positions to Ken Griffin's Citadel, which left it up 80% on the year at the end of July. Aschenbrenner has since pivoted toward boutique prime broker Clear Street to rebuild market access, while Morgan Stanley held early discussions with the fund after its launch but ultimately declined to establish a banking relationship. In a letter to investors following the summer liquidation, Aschenbrenner vowed to reboot the hybrid public-private strategy under a more conservative risk model that limits leverage exposure. The fund is now deploying customized flex options on semiconductor manufacturers including AMD, Intel, SK Hynix, and SanDisk, alongside AI infrastructure providers like CoreWeave, allowing magnified equity exposure while capping downside to pre-paid premiums.
TSMC Trades at $428 as 24/7 Wall St. Sets $492 Target on Record August Sales
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is trading at $428.29 against a 24/7 Wall St. price target of $492.37, implying 14.96% upside on a buy rating with 90% confidence. The call rests on record August 2026 revenue that surged 53.3% year over year, with January-through-August revenue up 39.3%, prompting management to raise full-year 2026 revenue guidance to slightly above 40% USD growth. Q2 2026 delivered EPS of $4.31 against a $3.8866 estimate, revenue of $40.20 billion, up 36.05% year over year, and a 67.7% gross margin, while Q3 revenue is guided to $44.6 billion to $45.8 billion and the 2026 capital budget was raised to $60 billion to $64 billion. The bull case leans on demand from Nvidia, whose Q3 guide of $108 billion, and Broadcom, whose Q3 FY26 AI semiconductor revenue reached $16.7 billion, up 221% year over year, effectively lock in TSMC's advanced-node order book, while Intel Foundry lost $2.1 billion in its latest quarter. The main near-term risk is gross-margin compression, with the 2nm ramp expected to dilute gross margin by 3 to 4 percentage points and overseas fabs adding another 2 to 3 points of drag, alongside Taiwan-Strait geopolitics as an unpriced tail risk; the bear-case one-year price is $413.79 against a bull case of $525.08 and a sell-side consensus target of $552.38.
Piper Sandler Initiates Seven Semiconductor Stocks, Names Broadcom and Nvidia Top Picks
Piper Sandler initiated coverage on seven major semiconductor stocks, assigning Overweight ratings to AMD, Arm, Broadcom, Marvell and Nvidia, while Intel and Qualcomm received Neutral ratings. Broadcom and Nvidia were named top picks for their accelerators, and AMD and Arm were highlighted for gaining market share in CPU servers. Analysts David O'Connor and Zackary Altman said the AI market is starving for more compute capacity, noting that 2027 is already sold out and order books are full for 2028, and they estimate a $2.2T compute market by 2030, split into $2T for accelerators and $0.2T for CPUs, a fivefold expansion that translates into an average of roughly 45% EPS CAGR across the group. The firm set price targets of $600 on AMD, $320 on Arm, $460 on Broadcom, $110 on Intel, $270 on Marvell, $300 on Nvidia and $190 on Qualcomm. O'Connor pointed to GPU hourly pricing as evidence of scarcity, citing Silicon Data's H100 pricing index at $2.60 per hour versus $2.00 in December, and noted that GPU chip costs have risen from 30% to 40% over the last two generations.
Atsign and Intel Claim 88x Encryption Speedup for Edge AI
Atsign announced that, working with Intel, it has solved the encryption bottleneck holding back autonomous Edge AI agents, achieving a performance uplift of approximately 88x for hardware-accelerated, end-to-end encrypted Agent-to-Agent communications. The two companies co-published a Smart Transportation Solution Brief titled "Securing Agentic AI at the Edge for Smart Transportation," which details zero-trust Agentic AI benchmarks showing the uplift varies by hardware: roughly 88x on Intel Xeon, up to 5 Gbps, and roughly 60x on Intel Core Ultra 9, up to 6 Gbps. The solution pairs Atsign's trusted identity management, namespace isolation, scoped data sharing, end-to-end encryption and auditability with Intel's hardware-backed key generation, accelerated encryption and hashing, protected key storage, secure boot, Trusted Compute, Total Memory Encryption and Full Disk Encryption. Atsign CEO Aparna Rayasam called the result a performance breakthrough and a game-changing evolution for systems where AI-enabled devices must operate autonomously at the edge. Intel has also added Atsign to its Industrial Builders partner program, giving Intel customers access to Atsign's pre-validated solutions, streamlined sourcing, compliance assurance and direct collaboration on RFPs, reference architectures and proof-of-concept deployments.
ASML Expands High-NA EUV Ties With Samsung and Intel
ASML Holding NV is expanding its High-NA EUV customer collaborations with Samsung Electronics and Intel as AI-related chip demand raises manufacturing complexity. On Tuesday, ASML expanded its long-standing partnership with Samsung around High-NA EUV and advanced semiconductor manufacturing, and that same day extended its collaboration with Intel on future scaling needs, including larger-format masks. Intel has already moved High-NA into production, helping Intel Foundry in Panther Lake production and qualifying the technology on select 18A product layers, which ASML's second-quarter presentation described as a new readiness milestone. Samsung is joining an industry initiative to develop a 12-inch photomask platform for High-NA EUV and plans to introduce ASML's High-NA technology into future DRAM high-volume manufacturing by 2028. In the first quarter of 2026, the High-NA platform had processed more than 0.5 million wafers and achieved availability above 80%, while ASML expects advanced foundry Logic revenue to rise about 25% in 2026, Memory revenue to increase 75% and EUV revenue to grow about 45%. Management still expects discussions with all customers on exactly how and when High-NA will enter high-volume manufacturing, leaving the pace of wider adoption dependent on customer qualification and manufacturing decisions.
TSMC and ASML Team Up to Expand Large-Format Photomasks for High NA EUV
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, is teaming up with ASML Holding N.V. to advance the semiconductor industry's shift toward larger-format extreme ultraviolet photomasks. The companies established the industrywide initiative on Sept. 7, ahead of the annual SPIE BACUS Conference in Monterey, CA, aiming to establish a 12-inch mask pilot line by 2031 and pave the way for 12-inch High-NA lithography systems to enter advanced-node production by 2033. While High Numerical Aperture EUV will initially be adopted for production using the current 6-inch masks, the transition to larger 12-inch masks is expected to boost fab productivity, lower chipmaking costs and eliminate stitching constraints across the semiconductor industry. TSMC plans to use ASML's High-NA technology in high-volume manufacturing for advanced nodes starting in 2030, and expects more layers to require High NA EUV as nodes advance, primarily because of increasingly complex transistor architectures needed for AI applications. Separately, Intel Foundry and ASML said High NA is now being used in high-volume manufacturing, with more than one million wafers processed to date across early tool certification and testing, research and development, and volume production on select layers for a subset of Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, code-named Panther Lake.
Intel and ASML have announced that more than one million wafers have been processed using High-NA EUV lithography, marking a significant step toward commercial manufacturing. The technology is being used for select layers of Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 processors, code-named Panther Lake, produced on Intel 18A, and the companies report that performance meets or exceeds comparable layers patterned using the NXE platform. ASML plans to pilot larger-format masks by 2031 and have the technology ready for high-volume production by 2033, with collaboration from major customers like TSMC and Samsung. Intel's Q2 2026 report revealed a revenue of $16.1 billion, a 25% increase year-over-year, but its foundry business still posted an operating loss of $2.1 billion, with only $293 million of quarterly revenue from external customers. While the milestone boosts confidence in High-NA adoption, Intel must prove it can convert manufacturing progress into profitable external foundry business, and ASML faces the challenge of broader customer adoption over time.
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