Intel Corporation INTC recently announced the launch of the cutting-edge GPU chip, Crescent Island. The AI ecosystem is evolving rapidly. The focus is shifting from training big AI models with a large amount of data to AI inference workloads, that is, actually using the AI models in real time for various tasks. Intel’s new data center GPU is engineered to match the rising requirements of AI inference workloads.
The GPU is based on Intel’s Xe architecture and is designed to be cost and energy-optimized for air-cooled enterprise servers. It offers high memory capacity and seamlessly supports high bandwidth requirements.
Intel is also pushing for an open software and hardware ecosystem that will give hyperscalers greater control over the deployment and scaling of AI systems. The GPU supports a wide range of data types, making it suitable for inference applications and token-as-a-service providers.
Per a report from Grand View Research, the global AI inference market, which is estimated at $97.24 billion in 2024, is projected to witness a compound annual growth rate of 17.5% from 2025 to 2030. Intel is steadily advancing its AI accelerator portfolio to capitalize on this market trend. With its Xeon 6 processors and GPU offerings, Intel intends to gain a competitive advantage across emerging verticals, such as AI PC, AI data center and industrial edge.
Intel faces competition from NVIDIA Corporation NVDA and Advanced Micro Devices AMD. NVIDIA offers a comprehensive portfolio for AI inference infrastructure. The NVIDIA Blackwell, H200, L40S, and NVIDIA RTX offers remarkable speed and efficiency in AI inference across cloud, workstations and data centers.
AMD Instinct™ MI350 Series GPU, featuring powerful and power efficient cores, has set a new benchmark in generative AI and high-performance computing in data centers. With NVIDIA’s dominance and AMD’s strong momentum, Intel faces a steep uphill battle in the AI inference domain.
Intel has gained 62.3% over the past year compared with the industry’s growth of 30.5%.
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Going by the price/book ratio, the company’s shares currently trade at 1.48 book value, lower than 37.33 of the industry average.
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Intel’s earnings estimates for 2025 have remain unchanged, while earnings estimates for 2026 have declined over the past 60 days.
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Zacks Investment Research Intel stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.