New York, Feb 11, 2026, 15:35 EST — Regular session.
Intel shares rose 2% to $48.08 in afternoon trading on Wednesday, after swinging between $46.87 and $49.52. About 87 million shares had traded, with chip stocks broadly higher; the iShares Semiconductor ETF gained 2.8%, Nvidia added 1.5% and AMD slipped 0.2%.
The move keeps Intel in play for momentum traders who have treated the stock as a barometer for whether the company can turn AI demand into steadier revenue, not just headlines. Rate expectations have also stayed front and center for the sector.
Intel is trying to sell investors on a two-part story: more data-center and networking attach sales around AI systems, and a longer-term push in contract chipmaking through Intel Foundry, its manufacturing arm. Small shifts in sentiment can show up fast in the share price.
On Tuesday, Intel said it will use Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to showcase “AI inference” running in live mobile networks — inference is the step of running trained AI models to make decisions in real time. The company said it will highlight work across the radio access network, or RAN, and the core network, pitching upgrades that avoid costly “rip-and-replace” overhauls. (Newsroom)
That pitch sits away from the hottest part of AI — training giant models — and closer to the plumbing that keeps networks running. It is less glamorous, but it is where operators are trying to cut power use, automate tasks and keep latency down.
Chip shares found support after a shutdown-delayed U.S. jobs report showed payrolls rose by 130,000 in January, beating forecasts, even as benchmark revisions based on more complete payroll records chopped last year’s tally. “With the policy rate around neutral, January’s guidance pointing toward patience and the economy chugging along, an extended pause still seems likely,” Nationwide economist Oren Klachkin wrote in a note. (Reuters)
Intel’s own near-term picture remains messy. On Jan. 22, it projected first-quarter revenue of $11.7 billion to $12.7 billion and said it had been caught off guard by demand for server CPUs that sit alongside AI accelerators; “In the short term, I’m disappointed that we are not able to fully meet the demand in our markets,” CEO Lip-Bu Tan told analysts. (Reuters)
Tan has also said Intel plans to build graphics processing units for data centers, stepping into a market dominated by Nvidia. “I just hired the chief GPU architect, and he’s very good. I’m very delighted he joined me,” Tan said earlier this month. (Reuters)
The company has also kept one foot in external bets tied to AI hardware. Reuters reported last week that Intel is set to invest about $100 million in AI chip startup SambaNova Systems in a funding round of more than $350 million led by Vista Equity Partners, though sources cautioned that final terms could change. (Reuters)
But Intel’s turnaround still depends on execution that has slipped before. Manufacturing yields and supply constraints can pressure margins even when demand is strong, and a cooling in AI capital spending would leave less room for mistakes.
Competition is not easing up. AMD continues to push server CPUs, and Nvidia’s software ecosystem anchors much of the spending around AI infrastructure, leaving Intel to fight for “attach” sales and foundry customers.
The next near-term marker is Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, running March 2-5, where Intel is scheduled to show its network AI work in front of telecom buyers and partners. (Mwcbarcelona)
