INTC Prints Fresh Record as WSJ Confirms Apple Foundry Deal

The Catalyst

The Wall Street Journal broke on May 8 that Apple and Intel reached a preliminary chip-making agreement after more than a year of intensive talks, with the formal deal hammered out in recent months. Per MacRumors' read of the report, Intel would manufacture lower-end M-series chips for select iPad and Mac models on its 14A (1.4nm) node, with production not beginning until 2028. iPhone chips are mentioned as potential future products. This is supply-chain diversification rather than replacement — Apple still leans on TSMC for primary silicon, but TSMC's advanced capacity is increasingly captive to Nvidia and AMD's AI demand. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick brokered the deal directly, meeting repeatedly with Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and Jensen Huang over the past year to push Intel onto their customer lists. The US government has been Intel's largest shareholder since fall 2025.

Why The Tape Is Diverging From Sell-Side

The cash stock printed an all-time high of $130.57 intraday against a Wall Street consensus mean target still parked near $79.05, with the analyst rating split sitting at 13 Buys, 30 Holds, and 5 Sells. INTC is up roughly 197% year-to-date and 118% over the past month. The Foundry unit posted a $2.4 billion operating loss in Q1 — the same unit Apple is now signing onto. The market is pricing the WSJ scoop as the rerating event that converts the foundry pivot from a slide deck into a three-customer reality: Tesla on 14A, Microsoft and Amazon on prior nodes, and now Apple. Sell-side has not yet caught up, which is why the squeeze leg keeps extending instead of fading.

What's Still Hanging

The deal is preliminary. No signed contract, no disclosed volumes, and any meaningful Apple revenue does not show up in Intel's income statement until 14A reaches production in 2028 — three years from now. Both companies declined to comment to the WSJ. Apple's prior Intel relationship ended over continual chip delays on the Mac side, so execution risk on 14A is the bear case that has not been priced out. Short interest has already been squeezed hard across the last month per MarketBeat's tracker, so the secondary squeeze fuel from here is thinner than it was on the Bloomberg leak earlier this week. The HIP-3 perp prints into a third consecutive record session — the question is whether Monday opens with profit-taking once the headline-driven cash buyers clear, or whether the gap to the $79 sell-side anchor finally starts to close from the analyst side.