Strong Earnings Boost, Intel Soars 30% Premarket

The surge in AI infrastructure construction is driving a sharp increase in the demand for server chips, and Intel's first-quarter earnings report and second-quarter guidance have both exceeded expectations, indicating that the recovery of the former chip giant is accelerating.

Intel released its financial report on April 23, with revenue for the first fiscal quarter of 2026 growing by 7% year-on-year to $13.6 billion, higher than the expected $12.4 billion. The company estimates that second-quarter revenue will reach between $13.8 billion and $14.8 billion, with a midpoint of about $14.3 billion, far exceeding the average analyst expectation of $13 billion.

Before the US stock market opened, Intel's stock price surge widened to 30%.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in an interview that the scale of customer demand is enormous, and the company's current supply is still insufficient, and the company is focusing all its efforts on expanding the capacity of its factories.

After the announcement, Intel's stock price surged by 16% in after-hours trading. Prior to this, the stock had risen by 81% this year, with the closing price on the day of the earnings release at $66.78.

AI Server Demand Drives Explosive Growth in the Data Center Division

The data center and artificial intelligence business unit (DCAI) became the most eye-catching growth engine for the quarter.

Revenue for this unit reached $5.1 billion, a significant increase of 22% year-on-year, exceeding Wall Street expectations, reflecting the strong push from the massive expansion of AI on data center chips.

The demand for Intel's flagship Xeon server processors continues to heat up - as companies and cloud service providers accelerate the transformation of AI software into commercial services, the strategic value of the CPU, this universal computing unit, is being re-evaluated.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in an interview that customer order demand continues to grow, the company's current supply is still insufficient, and the company is "fully focused" on expanding the capacity of its factories.

"The scale of demand is huge, we are pushing hard to ensure delivery and meet demand, but our supply is still in short because customer demand keeps climbing."

All business lines outperform expectations, and the PC division remains robust

Revenue from Intel's three core business divisions all exceeded Wall Street forecasts.

Client Computing Group (CCG) revenue was $7.7 billion, a slight increase of 1% year-on-year; Data Center and AI division revenue was $5.1 billion, a 22% increase year-on-year; Foundry Services division Intel Foundry revenue was $5.4 billion, a 16% increase year-on-year. Intel Products overall revenue was $12.8 billion, a 9% increase year-on-year.

It is worth noting that the current PC industry is facing the pressure of a shortage of memory chips.

The demand for server products is hot, and memory suppliers are inclined to allocate capacity to high-performance server chips, leading to a tight supply of standard memory products used in mobile phones and personal computers, resulting in a decrease