The implications, the possibilities, the sheer surprise of today’s news that NVIDIA has taken a $5 billion stake in Intel has come as a shock to the tech system. Wall Street was staggered as well, boosting Intel stock by more than 30 percent not only on NVIDIA’s investment but also on the two companies forming a partnership to develop chips for personal computers and data centers.
A story on the MSN site from NBC News quotes stock analyst Dan Ives: “This is a game changer deal for Intel as it now brings them front and center into the AI game. Along with the recent U.S. government investment for 10 percent (in Intel) this has been a golden few weeks for Intel after years of pain and frustration for investors.”
Ives added that the partnership “further strengthens” the US lead versus China in artificial intelligence. “Intel now goes from a laggard to a catalyst,” he said.
Intel, which has struggled to compete not only in the GPU-AI compute arena but also, increasingly, versus AMD in the x86 CPU sector, now will partner with NVIDIA on CPU-GPU integration. Intel thus aligns itself NVIDIA’s commanding, 90 percent-plus market share position in GPUs. To date, NVIDIA has integrated its GPUs with Arm-based CPUs with such products as the Grace Hopper Superchip, which utilize Arm-based Neoverse cores.
In its announcement today, Intel said: “For data centers, Intel will build NVIDIA-custom x86 CPUs that NVIDIA will integrate into its AI infrastructure platforms and offer to the market.”
But the deal also has implications for Intel’s currently money-losing foundry business. An article in The Stack reported that “Intel will fab NVIDIA CPUs for data centre hardware and x86 system-on-chips (SOCs) that integrate NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets for personal computers under a landmark new partnership.”
“Intel’s leading data center and client computing platforms, combined with our process technology, manufacturing and advanced packaging capabilities, will complement NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing leadership to enable new breakthroughs for the industry,” Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel. “We appreciate the confidence Jensen and the NVIDIA team have placed in us with their investment and look forward to the work ahead as we innovate for customers and grow our business.”
The news was announced during President Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K., which also included announcements of major investments by NVIDIA and other tech companies in that country’s AI infrastructure.
Intel has been on an increasingly turbulent roller-coaster ride in recent years, highlighted by the surprise resignation of former CEO Pat Gelsinger last December, with Gelsinger replaced by Tan in March. Only last month, President Trump accused Tan of being “highly conflicted” over previous business ties with China, followed quickly by a White House order that the federal government to invest $9 billion in Intel.
How that investment relates to NVIDIA’s decision to buy a stake in Intel is unknown. But at a state dinner yesterday at Windsor Castle, Trump, referring to NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, jokingly said, “Jensen, you’re taking over the world.”
