Intel surges 37% in one month amid AI-driven rally

Intel shares have rocketed roughly 37.5% over the past month, climbing from the low $90s to approximately $123.86 as of September 22. The catalyst isn’t some speculative narrative or meme-stock frenzy. It’s old-fashioned demand that the company literally cannot keep up with. CEO Lip-Bu Tan put the situation bluntly: Intel can currently fulfill only about 50% of customer orders for its CPUs. Why CPUs are suddenly the belle of the ball again For years, the AI hardware conversation revolved almost exclusively around GPUs. But the rise of agentic AI, where autonomous software agents perform complex tasks on behalf of users, has shifted the calculus. Agentic AI inference workloads lean heavily on CPUs, not just GPUs. Meta’s Muse AI agent app has become a flashpoint for this trend. The app topped the free app charts on US iPhones, and its popularity has translated directly into surging CPU demand for the inference tasks that power it. The numbers behind the momentum Intel’s Q2 2026 earnings provided the financial foundation for this rally. Revenue hit $16.1 billion, a 25% increase year-over-year, with the data center and AI segment driving much of that growth. Strategic partnerships have...