Why Intel Just Got the Endorsement of a Lifetime From Two Trillion-Dollar Companies

For most of the last decade, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC | INTC Price Prediction) was the stock you didn’t want to own. NVIDIA crushed it on AI accelerators, TSMC ate its foundry lunch, and AMD chipped away at its server franchise. I’ve been tracking this turnaround story since CEO Lip-Bu Tan took the helm, and what I’m seeing now is a setup I didn’t think was possible twelve months ago: two trillion-dollar companies just publicly anchored themselves to Intel’s roadmap.

The NVIDIA Endorsement Nobody Saw Coming

NVIDIA agreed to invest $5.0 billion in Intel common stock and co-develop multiple generations of custom data center and PC products with Intel. The kicker: “Xeon 6 was selected as the host CPU for NVIDIA’s DGX Rubin NVL8 systems, and Xeon remains the most deployed host CPU.”

Jensen Huang could have picked anyone. He picked Intel. That tells you something about where the CPU sits in the AI stack, and Tan said it directly: “The CPU now serves as the orchestration layer and critical control plane for the entire AI stack.” The CPU-to-GPU ratio in inference is moving from 1-to-8 toward parity. That math favors Intel.

Google Signs a Multiyear Deal

In Q1 2026, Google locked in a multiyear partnership for continued deployment of Intel Xeon processors and co-development of custom ASIC Infrastructure Processing Units. Tan called it “a good example of how we win in the AI infrastructure buildout.” CFO David Zinsner added that these long-term agreements run three to five years with locked volume and pricing.

Terafab: The Foundry Vote of Confidence

Then there’s Terafab, the chip manufacturing initiative bringing together SpaceX, Tesla, and Intel. Intel is contributing logic and memory chip design, fabrication, and advanced packaging toward a vertically integrated closed-loop plant, with chips optimized for the space environment. Tan’s framing was telling: “I can think of no better partner than Elon Musk.”

The Numbers Behind the Thesis

Q1 2026 delivered revenue of $13.6 billion, a 9% beat, with Data Center and AI up 22% YoY and Intel Foundry up 16%. AI-driven businesses now represent 60% of revenue and grew 40% year-over-year. Zinsner admitted demand shortfall “starts with a ‘b.'”

The stock has responded: up 210% year-to-date and 466% over the past year, closing at $114.68. Forward P/E sits at 143, and the average analyst target of $87.76 trails the tape badly.

The Trade Setup

You’d want to own Intel if you believe two things: that the CPU genuinely reasserts itself in inference and agentic workloads, and that the foundry business finally lands the anchor customers it needs. If you don’t believe those, the $2.4 billion foundry operating loss and the Mobileye impairment hand you a different story. NVIDIA and Google just told the market which side they’re on. That’s the endorsement of a lifetime, and it’s why Intel is suddenly the most interesting turnaround in semis.