"A spring ready to fire". Intel stock at 5-year peak after Google agreement

Intel shares rose 4.7% after it said Alphabet has committed to using future generations of Xeon processors and other chipmaker products in its data centers. That's just one of a stream of positive news that has sent Intel's stock price up 20% over the past week, bringing it to its highest since 2021.

Google, as part of a multi-year agreement, has committed to using future generations of Intel's Xeon CPUs. In addition, it will adapt Intel's IPUs (infrastructure processing units) for its AI infrastructure, which are chips that perform functions related to networking, security and data storage. The parties did not disclose the financial terms and procurement volumes.

The deal is one result of Intel's efforts to monetize the bigtech giant's spending on deploying artificial intelligence infrastructure. Getting as big a share of that pie as possible is critical to the company's attempt to return to growth after the recession years, Bloomberg writes.

One trend is playing into Intel's hands: CPUs - its key product - are increasingly seen as an important element of AI computing, the agency explains. While specialized GPUs from Nvidia are still the backbone of this infrastructure, there is a growing demand for universal CPUs that help the entire system work together.

Xeon processors can coordinate the training of AI systems and perform inferencing, the stage where AI models are put into practice, explained Amin Wahdat, senior vice president and chief technology officer for AI infrastructure at Google. "Intel has been a trusted partner for nearly two decades, and the Xeon roadmap gives us confidence that we can continue to meet the growing performance and efficiency demands of our workloads," Intel quoted him as saying in a press release.

Xeon once held more than 99% of the market, a major source of profit for Intel, then the world's largest semiconductor maker, Bloomberg recalls. But in recent years, the company has lost ground to competitors such as Advanced Micro Devices, as well as to internal developments from customers including Google.

Intel shares jumped 4.7% to $61 at the end of trading on Thursday. The last time they cost so much at the end of 2021. The company's stock has jumped more than 20% this week and more than 43% in the last six trading sessions. This is the largest six-day increase since February 2025, MarketWatch notes.

The papers received support not only from Google, but also from Elon Musk's companies: as it became known on Tuesday, the chipmaker will help Tesla, SpaceX and xAI to develop semiconductors for the Terafab project. Another driver was Intel's announcement last week that it was buying out Apollo Global Management's stake in an Irish processor fab, which showed that the company once again has funds at its disposal.

- "Now that the flood of positive news has accumulated on this stock and the overall market, it appears that Intel was like a compressed spring ready to fire," Mahoney Asset Management CEO Ken Mahoney told MarketWatch. - Even if the market returns to weakness, we still believe Intel stock will gradually rise, as it has been doing recently."

- Intel's Terafab partnership gives the company a "huge presence" in the future development of artificial intelligence, according to Bob Lang, chief options analyst at Explosive Options. He says it also reaffirms the importance of Intel's contract manufacturing business and could help attract other major partners and customers, MarketWatch writes.

- "You can't help but notice that Intel is performing well right now," Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote in a note to investors in early April. He noted that the company appears to be feeling confident since it's willing to pay more than $14 billion to buy back "49% of an asset it previously sold under forced terms," referring to the story of the sale and buyback of a plant in Ireland.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor