Frank Curzio
Founder & CEO of Curzio Research, Wall Street Unplugged Host
Intel's government backing signals that it will sit at the center of where the semiconductor supply chain is heading. The US government's $8.9B stake, bought at $20.47 a share in August, is up 315%, a $28B gain, and Nvidia followed with $5B just 27 days later, which is a signal, not a coincidence. The government does not buy $8.9B of anything it plans to let die, so never fight it when it puts capital behind something. x.comÂ
Intel's Q1 earnings should force analysts who had written it off to rewrite their models, and the policy tailwinds behind it just got stronger. The stock surged over 15% to break a record that stood since August 2000, and the Trump administration's stake is up nearly 250%, giving the White House every reason to keep the story alive. Intel sits at the center of data centers, domestic chip production and the push to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the US. x.com x.comÂ
Intel is the favorite semiconductor pick as value keeps accruing to AI's infrastructure layer, and its $20B equity offering clears the funding overhang despite about 5% dilution. Agentic AI's impact has at least a year to run: token production is up about 7.5x since January, OpenAI and Anthropic's combined run rate is near $100B, and big-cloud revenue growth hit 43% with margins expanding. Risks include 5.3% long-bond yields and weak mid-term-year seasonality, so add hedges and be selective. … Show more
Intel is a leading semiconductor name that benefits massively from US government investment and a likely Terafab collaboration with Tesla and SpaceX's xAI. Its chart is forming a textbook high-tight flag. x.comÂ
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.comÂ
Intel is going to land NVIDIA as a foundry customer and grow into a giant fab business. x.comÂ
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.comÂ
Intel faces massive capital raises because its CFO warned it must invest substantially more in substrates while the company is losing money. OpenAI's chip effort adds to the sense that the market is calling Intel irrelevant in the sector, with major outflows. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Intel's raised capex signals a 14A customer announcement is coming soon, since CEO Lip-Bu Tan said he would not raise it without a customer lined up. Intel's infrastructure is a nearly priceless national-security asset should China take Taiwan, and rebuilding it would cost far more than its roughly $500B value. President Trump is its biggest fan and pushes companies to do business with Intel, though that support could change when he leaves office in two years. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
Keybanc's reported supply-chain indications of foundry commitments make an Intel customer-win announcement on the upcoming earnings call seem possible. Those indications name Broadcom for networking switches and Google for server CPUs. Intel raised capital after management said exceptional success might require more investment. This is a trading view with discipline taking precedence over conviction. x.comÂ
Intel looks a tad overvalued near $100, so it is not a buy right now, even though its fundamentals are strong. It is state-backed, demand is so high that lower-grade chips are sold rather than discarded, and its downstream stack, including EMIB packaging, is the strongest in about a decade, possibly outpacing its foundry business per Morgan Stanley reporting. x.comÂ
Intel sits at the center of the rotation into legacy 1990s tech names, a theme spotted early in January that now shapes almost an entire portfolio. x.comÂ
