Intel stock forecast for 2030: Xeon demand surge and 10% price hikes drive $90 scenario

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SambaNova partnership and Foundry progress

Highlights

Intel trades near $47, up roughly 90% over the past 12 months despite posting a GAAP net loss in 2025.
Stock could reach $70-90 by 2030 if 18A secures external foundry customers and Xeon demand sustains multi-year growth.
INTC partnered with SambaNova for inference solutions, posted $4.7B DCAI revenue (up 15% sequentially), and raised Xeon prices 10% amid supply constraints.

He stepped back from discussions regarding this collaboration, as confirmed by an Intel spokesperson. In this partnership, Intel and SambaNova plan to co-develop rack-scale inference solutions that will utilize Intel Xeon processors, Intel GPUs, networking, and storage integrated with SambaNova's systems.

They are aiming to tap into what both companies see as a multi-billion-dollar opportunity in the inference market. SambaNova's SN50 accelerator employs a dataflow architecture that claims to deliver about three times the efficiency of Nvidia's B200 in latency-sensitive inference tasks.

On Intel's Q4 earnings call, CFO David Zinsner admitted the company misjudged demand for data center products. Over the third and fourth quarters, unit demand increased rapidly. Zinsner described this as likely a multi-year demand trend. Intel's Xeon 6 platform is used extensively as the host CPU in GPU systems like Nvidia's DGX B200 and B300. Every accelerator box needs a host CPU.

Moreover, Reuters reported in early February that Intel is raising server CPU prices by 10% for Chinese customers amid supply constraints, with lead times extending up to six months. Intel is now reallocating foundry capacity from client chips to meet surging demand for Xeon server processors. This means fewer PC chips in the near term but higher-margin server revenue as supply catches up starting in Q2.

18A foundry progress shows yield improvements

Intel's 18A foundry's progress is showing big improvements in yield. This process node is the first in the world to use both gate-all-around transistors and power delivery from the back. Intel showed off the Core Ultra Series 3 processors at CES 2026 in January. These were the first consumer chips made with the 18A technology, and they will power more than 200 laptop designs. Tan said during the earnings call that the yield for 18A is going up by 7 to 8% per month, which shows that the yields are in line with what the company expected.

In Q4 2025, the foundry business generated $4.5 billion in revenue but faced an operating loss of $2.5 billion, with external foundry revenue only reaching $222 million for the quarter. Microsoft has confirmed its collaboration on custom silicon, while AWS is partnering with Intel on custom fabric; however, Nvidia's involvement is currently limited to discussions around advanced packaging.

For Q4 2025, revenue reached $13.7 billion, which was at the high end of guidance. The non-GAAP gross margin stood at 37.9%, exceeding guidance by about 140 basis points. DCAI revenue climbed to $4.7 billion, reflecting a 15% increase sequentially. Nevertheless, the company reported a GAAP net loss of $600 million for Q4 and a full-year revenue of $52.9 billion for 2025, which is essentially flat compared to 2024.

Nvidia finalized its $5 billion investment in Q4 2025, acquiring over 214.7 million Intel shares at $23.28 each, which gives them roughly a 4% ownership stake. Additionally, the U.S. government holds about 9.9% through the CHIPS Act, which provided $5.7 billion in direct funding along with $3 billion in tax credits.

Recently, Intel stock tested resistance near $50 after the SambaNova partnership announcement before pulling back to $47 as investors weighed foundry losses against surging Xeon demand and 10% server CPU price increases.

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