Intel (INTC) Q1 2026 earnings report
An Intel Xeon 6+ data center CPU chip is on display at the Intel Technology Tour in September 2025. Intel Xeon 6+ is expected to be released in the first half of 2026.
Courtesy: Intel
Intel reported first-quarter earnings Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations as the struggling chipmaker shows signs of revival.
Shares of the US chip maker rose 15% in after-hours trading.
Here is the company’s performance compared to the forecasts of analysts participating in the LSEG survey:
- earnings per share: 29 cents corrected, 1 cent expected
- Revenues: $13.58 billion, expected $12.42 billion
Intel has become a favorite on Wall Street, with its shares up more than 80% this year as of Thursday’s close, following an 84% rise in 2025. The chipmaker has been backed by the Trump administration, which made the US government its largest shareholder last year as part of an effort to bring chip manufacturing to the US. Nvidia and SoftBank he also invested billions in Intel.
But the business isn’t seeing much momentum, falling far behind rivals Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices in the early stages of the AI boom.
This may finally be changing. Revenue increased 7.2% from $12.67 billion a year ago. This follows year-over-year revenue declines in five of the last seven quarters.
Intel said it expects second-quarter revenue to be between $13.8 billion and $14.8 billion and adjusted earnings per share of 20 cents. That’s well above analysts’ expectations for revenue of $13.07 billion and earnings per share of 9 cents.
Intel saw the strongest growth in its data center business, where it is gaining traction around artificial intelligence thanks to rising demand for central processing units (CPUs). This division’s revenue increased 22% to $5.1 billion.
The once dormant CPU market has taken off as intermediary workloads expand their computing needs beyond Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), which have so far driven AI. This growing CPU demand formed the basis for Intel’s recent $14 billion purchase of a 49% stake in the Irish chip factory it had previously sold to Apollo Global Management.
—CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos contributed to this report.
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