Chip maker Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) has become one of the hottest stocks in today’s market with year-to-date gains and valuation both being richer than AI GPU giant NVIDIA. The shares are up by more than 170% year-to-date while the forward P/E ratio of 54.64 is also higher than NVIDIA’s 23.58. In his morning appearance on the 15th, Cramer discussed Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and insisted that NVIDIA’s GPUs would experience greater demand:
“No, I want to get it off the plate. I mean I think that Intel’s doing so well. But Intel’s CPU, and people are more focused on GPU, which is Jensen, than CPU. Because we are going to have robots and we are going to have autonomous driving, no matter what.”
With the shares closing 7.7% higher on Thursday, the CNBC TV host discussed Intel Corporation in a series of tweets:
“Intel is now at last reacting to the work of Lip-Bu Tan post the destruction of its stock at the hands of Situational Unawareness. The stock lapped up the secondary. I think the foundry is key to American securityTTTTTTT
“Club name Intel, everyone knows as my fave, isn’t done.”
The bit about agentic AI CPUs has driven Intel Corporation’s narrative significantly in 2026. The firm’s second quarter results saw its data center and server business’s revenue sit at $6.26 billion to beat analyst estimates of $5.37 billion. The growth for the business was 59% which suprassed overall revenue growth of 25%.
Additionally, unlike NVIDIA, Intel Corporation can also rely on its foundry business to generate tailwinds. The firm is currently aiming to establish a foothold in the global contract chip fabrication market through the Intel Foundry business. On this front, CEO Lip-Bu Tan outlined that the firm was optimistic about volume production for the next-generation 14A chip manufacturing process technology. The movement in Intel Corporation’s shares on Thursday also came as news started floating around of the firm potentially partnering up with Korea’s SK hynix to manufacture memory chips in the US. The report came from Reuters, and SK hynix later clarified that nothing had been finalized.
At the same time, while the data center business is booming, the large scale capital expenditure requirements for setting up chip foundries mean that Intel Corporation continues to pour its profits into Foundry. During Q2, the segment reported a $2.1 billion operating loss while external customer revenue represented 5% of the $5.8 billion overall revenue. External customer revenue is a key metric for the foundry business’s success, as it determines market penetration. Not to mention, the strong share price performance has led to some, such as Piper Sandler, to warn that near-term upside might be limited.
For NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), the narrative is tied to AI chip demand. The importance of sustained demand was clear at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, where CEO Jensen Huang insisted that AI development did not have to slow down. His remarks followed Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, who outlined that safety concerns necessitated a slowdown, but Huang countered by arguing that labs with safety concerns should delay launching products until said concerns had been resolved, instead of pushing for a broader slowdown.
Huang’s comments came as NVIDIA Corporation’s data center revenue doubled to $89 billion in Q2 for a 117% bump and its Q3 guidance implied a 117% annual revenue growth. Yet, with the FY28 guidance implying a growth slowdown to 70%, the timeline might be uncertain for the robotics and other tailwinds Cramer discussed. Piper Sandler is quite optimistic about NVIDIA, though, as it initiated coverage with an Overweight rating and a $300 price target on the back of 80% share in AI compute and other factors.
Looking at hedge fund sentiment, 285 funds held a stake in NVIDIA Corporation during Q2, which was significantly higher than the 138 that had owned a stake in Intel, according to Insider Monkey’s data. Short interest as a percentage of float was higher for Intel at 2.88% compared to 1.29% for NVIDIA Corporation.
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