We just covered Donald Trump Stock Portfolio: 10 Best AI and Tech Stock Picks in 2026. Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) ranks #3 (see Donald Trump Stock Portfolio: 5 Best AI and Tech Stock Picks in 2026). The stocks identified in this article are based on Trump’s financial disclosure filings released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. According to a statement from the Trump Organization cited by Reuters, Trump’s investment holdings are maintained through fully discretionary accounts managed by third-party financial institutions, which have sole authority over investment decisions.
Stock Performance Since Trade Date: +135%
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is among Trump’s favorite AI picks and a stock he has taken a personal interest in. In just a matter of months, a beaten-down chip giant that Wall Street had largely written off became one of the market’s top performers, and Trump deserves a meaningful share of the credit. The U.S. government bought 433 million Intel shares at $20.47 each through a conversion of CHIPS Act grants into equity, giving Washington a 9.9% stake in Intel (NASDAQ:INTC). Trump also reportedly helped broker a preliminary deal between Intel and Apple, under which Intel’s 18A node would manufacture chips for iPad Pro and entry-level MacBook Air devices.
But beyond the Trump angle, Intel has genuine fundamental support. Bulls point to a structural change in how AI infrastructure is being built. The AI workload mix is rotating from training toward inference and agentic AI, shifting the architecture away from GPU-heavy clusters and back toward CPUs as the orchestration layer. Historically, the GPU-to-CPU ratio ran at 8:1 in training environments. For agentic AI, CEO Lip-Bu Tan says that ratio is moving toward 1:1 or even flipping CPU-heavy. Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) Data Center and AI segment grew 22% year over year in Q1 to $5.1 billion, with operating margins hitting 30.5%. Xeon 6 was selected as the host CPU for Nvidia’s DGX Rubin NVL8 systems, and Intel signed a long-term agreement with Google for Xeon processors to support Google Cloud workloads across AI training and inference. On the foundry side, the company has received close to $8.9 billion from the U.S. government and is now partnering with Tesla’s TeraFab consortium alongside SpaceX and xAI, with 18A yields improving at 7% per month.
Alpha Wealth Insiders Fund stated the following regarding Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:
“Despite poor fundamentals, we invested heavily in Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), viewing its role as the sole U.S. defense silicon chip foundry as “too big to fail.” We profited handsomely, buying equal amounts at $23.98, $29.60, and $30.70 (August-September) and selling all on March 17th at $45.10. This Intel trade yielded an approximate annualized return of 133%. Intel has since… (Click Here to Read the Letter in Detail).”
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While we acknowledge the risk and potential of INTC as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than INTC and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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