Intel has been one of the more surprising stories of 2026. Its stock has more than tripled this year, and the latest leg higher comes from back-to-back headline catalysts that are hard to ignore.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple and Intel reached a preliminary agreement for Intel to manufacture processors for Apple devices. The deal came after more than a year of negotiations and had help from the U.S. federal government, which previously converted $9 billion in grants into Intel stock — giving the U.S. roughly a 10% ownership stake in the company.
$INTC is reportedly working with SK Hynix on 2.5D packaging R&D.
They’re testing Intel’s EMIB substrates to connect HBM with logic chips which is a growing bottleneck in AI hardware. pic.twitter.com/rqmhdkgFDQ
— Shay Boloor (@StockSavvyShay) May 11, 2026
That news sent INTC up as much as 14% on Friday. By Monday premarket, the stock was up another ~6%, trading at $130.13.
Then came a second report. ZDNet Korea said Intel is in talks with SK Hynix about providing chip-packaging technology to integrate high-bandwidth memory and general-purpose semiconductors — a space currently dominated by TSMC. Neither Intel nor SK Hynix responded to requests for comment.
If both deals land, Intel’s foundry unit would go from having zero major external customers to two in a matter of weeks.
The Apple deal didn’t come out of nowhere. Intel had already put up a strong quarter before the headlines hit.
Q1 earnings came in well above Wall Street forecasts. Adjusted EPS was $0.29 against a consensus of just $0.01. Revenue hit $13.58 billion, beating the $12.42 billion estimate. The data center segment led the way, with revenue up 22% to $5.1 billion, driven by demand for CPUs in AI workloads.
CEO Lip-Bu Tan said on the earnings call: “The CPU is reinserting itself as the indispensable foundation of the AI era — this isn’t just our wishful thinking, it’s what we hear from our customers.”
The earnings beat sent INTC up 20% in after-hours trading when results were released.
Bank of America raised its price target on Intel to $96 from $56 following the Apple news, while keeping an Underperform rating. The bank acknowledged the foundry deal could bring in meaningful revenue, even as it kept its cautious stance.
Intel’s only previously confirmed major external foundry relationship had been with Terafab — tied to Elon Musk and designed to serve Tesla and other Musk companies — though details of that arrangement remain unclear.
The broader market was also supportive. The S&P 500 gained 0.84% to 7,398.93 on Friday, and the Nasdaq advanced 1.71% to 26,247.08, both setting record highs. The global semiconductor sector has added roughly $3.8 trillion in market cap over the last six weeks.
April non-farm payrolls came in at 115,000, above consensus, with unemployment at 4.3%.
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