3 weeks ago
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Bram Berkowitz, The Motley Fool
Wed, April 29, 2026 astatine 8:40 AM CDT 5 min read
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) precocious reported blowout 2026 first-quarter earnings. Not lone did the results transcend Wall Street statement estimates, but absorption besides provided guidance for the existent 4th good beyond analysts' expectations. Investors rewarded the beardown performance, sending the banal surging connected the time aft the report.
Perhaps adjacent better, 1 of the company's concern divisions that investors are excited astir had a breakout 4th and appears to beryllium playing an progressively important relation successful the artificial quality (AI) ecosystem. CEO Lip-Bu Tan conscionable delivered phenomenal quality to Intel shareholders.
Will AI make the world's archetypal trillionaire? Our squad conscionable released a study connected a little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly," providing the captious exertion Nvidia and Intel some need. Continue »
The rising relation of the CPU successful AI
Intel banal has been connected somewhat of a roller-coaster thrust implicit the past 5 years. A fewer years ago, galore investors thought the company, which has been a cardinal hardware decorator and shaper for decades, was destined to miss retired connected the AI boom.
While Intel had agelong designed cardinal processing units (CPUs) -- cardinal components successful laptops, desktops, and accepted servers -- the institution seemed to beryllium down the curve successful processing graphics processing units (GPUs) -- parallel processors that are peculiarly good suited for rapidly handling the types of computations that signifier the bulk of AI workloads.
Intel presently makes immoderate GPUs, but they are mostly viewed arsenic budget-friendly options, and they can't vie with the astir almighty models from Nvidia oregon Advanced Micro Devices in presumption of performance.
Now, possibly that volition alteration successful the future. Earlier this year, Intel hired Eric Demers from Qualcomm arsenic its caller GPU chief, with a program to physique information halfway GPUs that tin vie with Nvidia's.
The bully quality is that CPUs are becoming progressively much indispensable for AI information centers arsenic companies make a increasing fig of agentic AI solutions. That's an country wherever Intel is seeing precocious request and tin already excel. In the archetypal quarter, gross from the company's information halfway concern surged by 22% to implicit $5 billion.
While GPUs instrumentality connected the bulk of the enactment erstwhile it comes to inference -- the process of utilizing models connected caller information to scope a decision oregon reply a question -- autonomous AI agents indispensable retrieve a batch of information from antithetic sources and pat into antithetic areas to behaviour tasks. CPUs supply the close benignant of capabilities to orchestrate those tasks, whether they impact conducting a web hunt oregon evaluating a task an AI cause is astir to complete.
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