Intel Surges on $5.1 Billion Arm Stock AI Revenue

Intel stock jumped over 20% after Q1 results, and arm stock investors got a clearer number to anchor the move: $5.1 billion from Data Center and AI. The company also posted non-GAAP earnings of $0.29 per share, far above the $0.01 analysts expected. The gap between those two figures is the immediate reason the shares moved.

Intel Q1 Beats $0.29 Forecast

$13.6 billion in Q1 revenue gave the beat more weight, because Intel did not just clear a low earnings bar. It paired that with a profit figure that was nearly 30 times the forecast, giving the market a faster read on operating momentum than revenue alone.

$5.1 billion in Data Center and AI revenue was the number traders focused on next. That segment rose 22% year-over-year as companies upgraded aging data centers with Xeon 6 processors to handle inference workloads, a setup that points to demand in AI systems that run models rather than train them.

Xeon 6 Drives 60% Revenue

60% of total revenue now comes from AI-related businesses driven by Xeon 6 server CPU demand, and Intel management called the CPU the "indispensable foundation" of the AI era. Intel also said AI PC adoption exceeded 60% of client mix, while ASIC revenue doubled year-over-year past a $1 billion run rate, giving the quarter more than one AI-linked growth line.

Intel’s Xeon 6 was selected as the host CPU for Nvidia’s next-generation DGX Rubin NVL8 systems, a placement that keeps the company inside a flagship AI data center design. That kind of socket matters because it puts Intel’s processors into systems built for ongoing data center inference demand, not just one-off test deployments.

Foundry Hits $5.4 Billion

$5.4 billion in foundry revenue added another layer to the quarter, and it rose 16% year-over-year. Tesla signed on as Intel’s first major customer for its 14A manufacturing node, giving the foundry push a named customer as the company tries to build a second revenue stream alongside chips.

-$3.2 billion in negative free cash flow last year remains the friction point under the better quarter. If Intel keeps turning more AI demand into revenue while foundry orders expand, the market will be watching whether the current growth can outpace the cash burn that still sits in the background of the turnaround.