I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.Intel's stock rose 9% on Tuesday as reports indicate the chipmaker plans to raise PC CPU prices by 10% in October due to rising supply chain costs. Intel may also discontinue low-margin Small Core products. While the PC market remains weak, demand for server CPUs is surging due to AI needs, with analyst projections showing 15-20% growth in x86 server CPU quantities.
By Britney Nguyen
The chip maker is reportedly set to further lift prices on its PC chips as costs rise across the supply chain
Intel's stock rose 9% on Tuesday.
Intel has shown it can raise prices on personal-computer chips, and the company might soon start charging even more as the high costs of memory components weigh on the broader technology ecosystem.
The chip maker is reportedly looking to increase prices for personal-computer central processing units by 10% in October, according to Taiwan-based tech publication DigiTimes. Intel (INTC) could also stop making and selling its Small Core products, the report said. Those offerings come with a lower margin, meaning they're less profitable for the company.
Prices for Intel's PC CPUs have already been climbing since the end of last year as costs have risen across the supply chain for components such as memory chips and printed circuit boards, DigiTimes reported, citing supply-chain operators. Those dynamics have also led to price increases for server CPUs, which are in high demand for artificial-intelligence data centers.
Wall Street likes to see that Intel has pricing power. The stock gained 9% on Tuesday and is ahead 183% so far this year. Demand for the company's server CPUs has surged thanks to the rise of agentic AI and inference.
Intel did not respond to a request for comment from MarketWatch.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Srini Pajjuri said in a Monday note to clients that the PC and smartphone market looks "weak but stable," citing conversations with technology companies in Asia. He pointed to laptop production being slower than usual and demand for desktop computers looking "particularly weak."
Meanwhile, quantities of server CPUs based on Intel's x86 chip architecture are on pace to grow between 15% and 20% as supply aims to catch up with demand, Pajjuri said.
Additionally, Pajjuri said, the supply chain anticipates price increases of between 80% and 100% for high-bandwidth memory next year. The AI-driven demand for HBM from chip makers like Nvidia (NVDA) has contributed to shortages of dynamic random-access memory and rising prices for those components.
-Britney Nguyen
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09-08-26 1730ET