Intel shares hit new high on Apple report, rising foundry hopes
Story Highlights
- Intel shares surged 117% in 2025 on Apple chipmaking optimism
- Apple may use Intel Foundry for MacBook chips starting in 2027
- U.S. government’s $8.9 billion Intel investment doubled to $18.9 billion
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) shares climbed nearly 9% and reached a new 2025 high Tuesday amid growing optimism around Intel Foundry, its money-losing contract chipmaking business.
Some analysts still hold to the view that Intel’s best bet is to jettison its foundry ambitions, but for now at least, the investor tide is heading in the other direction.
The Intel rally began on Nov. 28, after a respected Apple analyst reported the company was in good position to build Apple chips used in MacBooks and iPads beginning in 2027.
“For Intel, the significance of securing advanced process orders from Apple far exceeds the actual contribution of this order to revenue and profits,” Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in an X post translated from Chinese.
Apple used Intel x86 chips in its computers for more than a decade. But that relationship wound down early this decade when Apple turned to a processor designed in-house and manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s dominant chipmaker that has a massive campus in north Phoenix.
Kuo said his reporting indicates that Intel could make a “lowest-tier” version of that Apple processor on a variant of Intel’s most advanced manufacturing process 18A.
Intel, still one of Arizona’s largest corporate employers with 10,000 workers at its Chandler Ocotillo campus despite companywide layoffs, has talked about foundry customer prospects before. But nothing has turned heads like Kuo’s report.