Overview
- Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya moved Intel from Underperform to Buy and raised his price target to $135, a call that helped push shares up roughly 9% on Friday.
- Arya’s thesis centers on “agentic AI,” which he says places extra demand on CPUs and expands Bank of America’s server CPU market forecast from $125 billion to over $170 billion by 2030.
- Bank of America projects Intel could capture about 25% of that larger market, translating to more than $40 billion in server CPU sales and more than $6 of earnings per share by 2030 under its model.
- The research note also highlights Intel Foundry as a second growth pillar, citing a Cadence partnership and potential customers such as Apple and MediaTek as drivers of rising foundry revenue in the firm’s forecast.
- Key risks remain: Intel must prove manufacturing execution and yield at advanced nodes, fend off AMD and Arm‑based competition, and turn upgraded forecasts into sustained revenue while broader analyst consensus and institutional ownership adjust.