Intel posts its fastest revenue growth in 15 years as AI-driven server chip demand surges

Intel delivered adjusted earnings of 42 cents per share on revenue of 16.1 billion dollars, far surpassing Wall Street’s consensus estimates of 21 cents per share and 14.42 billion dollars, and marking the company’s fastest quarterly revenue growth since 2011. The standout was Intel’s data center business, where revenue jumped 59 percent to 6.3 billion dollars, as CEO Lip-Bu Tan said AI is driving unprecedented demand for compute and that Intel’s CPU franchise is well positioned to capture sustainable growth alongside the GPUs typically associated with AI infrastructure. Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner told analysts that supply of server chips is currently constrained relative to demand, with customers signaling a strong and sustainable spending environment, prompting Intel to raise its 2026 capital expenditure target to 20 billion dollars from 18 billion, largely to fund new manufacturing capacity. The results extend a dramatic reversal for Intel, whose shares have gained more than 170 percent so far this year after the US government took a 10 percent stake in the company last year to support the domestic chip industry, even though Intel still has not landed a marquee external customer for its most advanced manufacturing process. The quarter offers some of the clearest evidence yet that the AI infrastructure boom, long dominated by Nvidia’s GPUs, is broadening out to benefit traditional CPU makers as companies build out agentic AI workloads that lean on general-purpose compute alongside specialized accelerators.