Intel has shifted from a binary bet to a compounder, with Apple's preliminary deal for Intel to make its chips confirming the foundry customers are there as CPU demand explodes. A valuation model puts Intel at $1.2T, and it could reach $1-2T. x.com  x.com  x.com 

Intel's new foundry deal is the first of many and puts it on a path to a $1T valuation. A second leading foundry should help margins for chip designers like Apple, Nvidia and Broadcom, and help equipment makers even more, since they gain a new foundry to sell into. x.com 

Intel is the poster child of hype-driven bottleneck trades with very little substance, so the risk is being the last one at the party. @munster_gene expects Apple to add at best a couple of billion dollars of revenue to Intel starting in 2028, likely about 2% of the business then. x.com 

Intel is worth far more than the $130 a share Citi analysts imply. If AI grows the CPU market to $130B a year by 2030 and Intel keeps 47% share, that is about $61B of sales and $24-25B of operating profit at a standard 40% margin. Foundry capacity should be fully utilized from 2028 as orders from Apple, Google and TeraFab surge, adding $50-60B of sales and $20-25B of operating profit. The combined company would top $120B in annual sales and roughly $50B in operating profit. x.com 

US sovereign AI and defense demand for domestically made compute will bring Intel most, if not all, US semiconductor designers as customers. PC weakness also lets Intel shift wafers to higher-margin server CPUs, but that takes a few quarters; capacity to ship more server CPUs is the limiter. The $240 billion 2030 server CPU market forecast is a stretch case, not the base case, versus roughly $200 billion consensus. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com 

Intel's high valuation is hard to justify while its foundry turnaround remains unproven. At about 59x forward earnings, nearly three times TSMC's 19x, Intel has slower projected revenue growth; its foundry lost $2.09 billion in Q2 2026, while TSMC's Q3 operating margin was 58.7%. A politician's stock purchase alone does not make Intel a buy. x.com  x.com 

Intel's foundry may be closer than the market assumes because its UMC 12nm partnership brings external-customer experience and a more customer-friendly design kit. Musk said Terafab plans to use Intel 14A, with Tesla and SpaceX building and running the fabs themselves; that would be an important outside test. Intel still must prove yields, volume and schedules, while Terafab's commercial terms remain unclear. Still bullish, but not enough to add now. x.com 

Intel is becoming a national AI infrastructure crown jewel, and $1T is only a start if it executes. Apple's preliminary deal to build chips on 18A-P, Google's reported 3M+ TPU orders through 2028 and its role as primary foundry for Elon Musk's TerraFab support that, alongside government and Nvidia stakes. EMIB-T packaging is its trump card: it can package chiplets built on anyone's silicon, including TSMC's, easing CoWoS constraints. If 18A misses, the foundry re-rating would take longer. x.com  … Show more

Intel is overvalued after running up about 5x from $20, with more capex, low operating margins and a run-up driven largely by Trump's promotion rather than fundamentals. TSMC earns over 30% operating margins and is ahead of schedule in Arizona, so Intel has no US fab monopoly. Trump leaves office in two years, and these fabs are unlikely to meaningfully improve on existing 2nm yields. It could still be a great trade. x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com  x.com 

Architecture changes could lift TSMC wafer demand. Shifting from 12-high to 8-high lifts volumes; an on-device AI phone upgrade cycle would be enormously bullish, while ASIC gains over Nvidia help because ASICs use more wafers. TSMC is arguably more vital to AI buildout than MAG stocks and a reasonable extended-AI-cycle play at a not-crazy multiple, barring big macro events. Margins may not expand as capex rises; a Terrafab partnership, if it happens, would somewhat ease Intel competition risk. … Show more