“(Build) The Biggest, Baddest CPU”: Intel Stock (NASDAQ:INTC) Notches up Despite Ironic Twist

This might have been the unkindest cut that chip stock Intel (INTC) could have received. Sure, yesterday and its potential loss of CHIPS Act funding was a low blow, no mistake there, but it only got worse as new reports revealed that several Intel staffers were leaving Intel to do exactly what Intel would have needed them to do: build the “biggest, baddest CPU” around. Shareholders took the news well, though, and sent shares up fractionally in Friday afternoon’s trading.

Four of Intel’s biggest names in research—who together had a combined experience of almost a century at Intel—departed the company in a plan to build a totally new kind of microprocessor. They will be using a kind of architecture that is completely different from Intel’s, reports note, and in the process, hopefully show up their former bosses in the process.

The four started their own company, called AheadComputing, and is working on an open style of architecture known as Reduced Instruction Set Computer – V, or RISC-V. The result, AheadComputing hopes, will be a processor that does fewer things than the current processor concept, but does this comparative handful of things better than the current processor does them. Essentially, reports note, the four are risking that AheadComputing—a vastly smaller company—will be able to move faster and better than Intel. Given Intel’s new “risk-averse” nature that we discovered yesterday with the 50% gross profit concept, they may not be wrong. But what has Intel missed out on in the process?

Roadmapping an Uncertain Future

But life goes on at Intel, reports note, and word notes that the Intel Foundry Direct Connect 2025 event is showing off its roadmaps and its partnerships. Intel Foundry, of course, is the chip manufacturing portion of Intel, and the one which has perhaps come under the most fire of late.

But Intel looks to start delivering under the 18A process this year, and that should go a long way toward re-establishing Intel’s dominance as a chip maker. Naturally, it is unclear as yet how much capacity 18A will have overall, and how much of that capacity can go to making other companies’ chips. Early word suggests that everything is on schedule, so that will, at least, not be a problem. And with 14A and 14A-E waiting in the wings, it is entirely possible that Intel may be able to keep the streak going and come out ahead in the end.

Is Intel a Buy, Hold or Sell?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on two Buys, 25 Holds and four Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 34.97% loss in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $21.29 per share implies 5.63% upside potential.

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