Intel nears two-decade high as AI deals drive stock surge
Shares jump 65% this year, giving Intel a $326 billion market cap, its highest valuation since 2021 and near reaching its highest market cap since it approached $500 billion during the dot-com era in 2000.
Shares in Intel have surged sharply in recent weeks, pushing the company toward its highest valuation in more than two decades and signaling renewed investor confidence in a business that had long struggled to keep pace with rivals in the artificial intelligence boom.
The U.S. chipmaker’s stock has risen 38% since the beginning of April and is up 65% year to date, lifting its market value to approximately $326 billion. That places Intel at its highest valuation since 2021 and near reaching its highest market cap since it approached $500 billion during the dot-com era in 2000.
The rally has been driven by a series of announcements that position Intel more directly within the fast-growing AI infrastructure market. Chief among them is an expanded partnership with Google, which will deploy Intel’s latest Xeon 6 central processing units to support artificial intelligence training and inference workloads.
At the same time, Intel has aligned itself with one of the more ambitious projects in the emerging AI ecosystem. The company confirmed it would participate in Terafab, an initiative led by Elon Musk to build an advanced chip complex in Austin, Texas.
Terafab is designed to develop and manufacture custom chips for Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla. Intel said its capabilities in designing, fabricating and packaging high-performance chips at scale would help support the project’s goal of producing one terawatt of compute annually for AI and robotics applications.
The announcement was accompanied by a public show of alignment, with Intel publishing a photograph of its CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, alongside Musk.
Investors have also responded to signs of strengthening financial capacity. Earlier this month, Intel repurchased the remaining stake in its Ireland chip fabrication facility for $14.2 billion, reversing a 2024 decision to sell a 49% share. The move suggests improved balance sheet flexibility and a willingness to regain control over key manufacturing assets.
Even so, the recent rally only partially closes the gap with broader market performance. Intel’s stock remains about 8% below its 2020 peak, while the S&P 500 has gained more than 100% over the same period, buoyed in part by the rise of AI-focused chipmakers such as Nvidia, Broadcom and Micron.
