'This is a fundamentally different company today': Intel reports strong financial results, says its upcoming 14A process is already outpacing early 18A yields

Intel has reported its first-quarter 2026 financial results, and they read as something of a victory lap. It wasn't too long ago the company appeared to be down on its knees, but CEO Lip-Bu Tan, now just over a year into his posting, struck a defiant tone in the opening remarks.

"Intel is now a very different company than when I first joined over a year ago," said Tan. "We have taken, and continue to take, deliberate steps to rebuild Intel into a more competitive and more profitable company.

"A year ago, the conversation about Intel Corporation was about whether we could survive. Today, it is about how quickly we can add manufacturing capacity and scale our supply to meet enormous demand for our products," the Intel chief continued. "This is a fundamentally different company today, and we still have a lot of work ahead."

The company reports first-quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, which CFO David Zisner notes, "would have been meaningfully higher, but demand continues to outpace our growing supply." AI-driven businesses are said to now represent 60% of Intel's revenue, and grew by 40% year-over-year.

Data center and AI revenue was reported as $5.1 billion, a seven percent sequential increase and 22% year-over-year. ASIC revenue was reported to have nearly doubled compared to the same quarter in 2025, while client computing group revenue is up by $300 million quarter-over-quarter, representing 33% of total revenue.

Zisner notes that the client computing revenue increase was down to "improved product margin, sales of previously reserved inventory, better 18A yields, and lower operating expenses." It's AI server-fuelled boom time in the processor industry, although reports have indicated that some Intel chips are already in short supply, and that the industry is waiting for more 18A offerings to plug the gap.

Speaking of 18A, the company reports "better" yields and "great progress" for its previously-struggling chip process, although Intel Foundry's operating loss was reported as $2.4 billion. That's a $72 million improvement over the previous quarter, and something Zisner explains as being "mostly offset by increased operating expenses associated with an intentional step-up in Intel 14A investments."

CEO Lip-Bu Tan said that the "maturity, yield, and performance" of Intel's in-development 14A process is already outpacing 18A at a similar point in time, and that the company is continuing to develop process design kits (PDKs) with "multiple customers".

One of which is Tesla. CEO Elon Musk recently announced that Intel's 14A process will be used to make AI chips for the company, as part of a partnership with Intel for his Terafab project—which represents a huge potential boon for Intel. In fact, Musk was given special mention in Lip-Bu Tan's opening remarks:

"Elon and I share a strong conviction that global semiconductor supply is not keeping pace with the rapid acceleration in demand," said Tan. "We are excited to explore innovative ways to refactor silicon process technology, looking for unconventional ways to improve manufacturing efficiency that will eventually lead to a dynamic improvement in the economics of semiconductor manufacturing."

And there's always that Nvidia/Intel collaboration to consider, too. Rumours have suggested that the team green/team blue efforts will be named "Serpent Lake", and potentially be a combination of Nvidia's next-gen Rubin GPU tech and Intel's own silicon. The exact details are mostly speculation at this point, though, and Nvidia was only tangentially mentioned in the earnings call.

Still, Intel's certainly been busy racking up partnership and collaboration agreements in the past year, and by the sounds of it, the AI boom has played a significant part in its impressive performance, too. The company's share price jumped by 20% after the earnings and forecasts were revealed, and that's likely to be news that makes Lip-Bu Tan, and Intel's investors, very happy indeed.

Best PC build 2026

1. Best CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

2. Best motherboard: MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi

3. Best RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32 GB DDR5-7200

4. Best SSD: WD_Black SN7100

5. Best graphics card: AMD Radeon RX 9070

👉Check out our list of guides👈