NEW YORK - Shares in Intel soared on Thursday after it smashed quarterly earnings expectations in what could be a sign that the US chip maker is on a path to recovery.
Intel reported revenue of $13.6 billion in a 7 percent increase from the same quarter a year earlier, but logged a $3.7 billion loss that was less than the market had anticipated.
It forecast revenue in the current quarter would range from $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion.
Shares soared more than 19 percent in after-market trades.
"The next wave of AI will bring intelligence closer to the end user, moving from foundational models to inference to agentic," Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in the earnings release.
"This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel's CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings."
A hot AI trend of digital "agents" specialising in handling computer tasks independently means more work for networks using the kinds of processing units made by Intel local networks rather than cutting-edge GPUs in datacenters, according to Tan.
Shares in Intel took off late last year after AI giant Nvidia announced it would invest $5 billion in its lagging rival.
"Intel delivered the kind of report that the bulls needed to justify a stock that's soared over the past year, with data centre momentum and foundry progress both pointing in the right direction," Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said of the earnings.
"These results make Intel's turnaround look less like a hope-fueled blip and more like a steadier, longer-term trajectory."
- AFP