Intel Q1 better than expected, aims for CPU renaissance

Intel reported better-than-expected first quarter earnings and said it is set up for a CPU renaissance due to AI inference.

The company reported a first quarter net loss of $3.7 billion, or 73 cents a share, but non-GAAP earnings were 29 cents a share. Revenue for the first quarter was $13.6 billion, up 7% from a year ago.

Wall Street was expecting Intel to report non-GAAP earnings of a penny a share on revenue of $12.43 billion.

The consensus this week at Google Cloud Next has been that the CPU is going to gain in importance due to AI inferencing. That take has also been outlined by AWS and other AI players including Nvidia.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the company now has a "solid foundation in place" to take advantage of demand for AI inference and agentic AI.

David Zinsner, CFO of Intel, said the first quarter results reflect "the growing and essential role of the CPU in the AI era."

By unit, Intel's data center and AI division delivered first quarter sales of $5.1 billion, up 22% from a year ago. The client computing group had revenue of $7.7 billion, up 1% from a year ago. Intel Foundry revenue was $5.4 billion in the first quarter, up 16% from a year ago, but most of $5.3 billion was due to manufacturing Intel chips.

Intel has regained its footing and formed partnerships with Google, Nvidia and SambaNova.

As for the outlook, Intel projected second quarter revenue of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion with GAAP earnings of 8 cents a share and non-GAAP earnings of 20 cents a share.