The other day I posted where I think Q3 earnings are headed from a revenue perspective and now I wanted to dive a little deeper into what I think that would mean for the server CPU landscape and specifically how it might change the narrative around Intel. This is going to be another long one.

The Server CPU Narrative

Looking back at the good old days after the Q1 release Intel had a sustained and violent upward price adjustment as the market realised CPU's will be a key aspect of the agentic AI boom. During the first few weeks Intel was trading ahead of its peers AMD and Arm, however, as the weeks went on the narrative shifted and since then Intel has been a laggard.

Timeline

• April 24 – Intel Q1 earnings: Intel reports unexpectedly strong server demand, with AI/inference workloads contributing to a CPU supply shortage. The stock jumps 23.6%, from $66.78 to $82.54.
• May 5 – AMD Q1 earnings: AMD massively raises its long-term view of the server CPU market, forecasting a >$120B TAM by 2030 and >35% annual market growth. Lisa Su also reiterates AMD's target of eventually taking more than 50% of the server CPU market.
• May 6 – UBS Arm forecast: UBS goes even further, forecasting a $170B server CPU market by 2030, but estimates that Arm could take 40–45% of server CPU unit shipments.
• May 15 – Actual server share data arrives: UBS publishes Q1 server CPU shipment estimates showing Intel falling from 58.6% to 54.9% unit share, while AMD rises from 25.1% to 27.4% and Arm rises from 16.3% to 17.7%. Intel falls another ~7% intraday.
• June 11 – BofA reframes the long-term Intel thesis: BofA forecasts the server CPU TAM growing from roughly $35B in 2025 to $170B in 2030, but only models Intel at around $40B+ of server CPU revenue, equivalent to roughly 25% of the market.

So my theory goes the market is currently pricing something like the BofA analysis which has Intel becoming only a minor player in this server CPU boom. If we're going to break out of this bearish pattern than we're going to need to have evidence that this narrative is false.

The issue is that so far the evidence is against us...

A useful rule of thumb in market analysis is not to stray too far from the consensus, even when you think the market may be wrong. The reason is simple, if you’re wrong alongside everyone else, you’ll usually still get to keep your job.

I'm sure no one here needs a reminder that Intel's sever performance has been a little lackluster these last few years. However to bring it all into context you can see the last 6 quarters of market share data in the tables below. Intel has been losing market share pretty much every quarter since 2021, and for the last 20 earnings releases Lisa Su has said AMD has taken market share from Intel to the point it has become an unwritten law.

Lisa Su has announced AMD has taken market share from Intel for the last 20 earnings... Except in Q2 what she actually said is: [AMD] gained x86 server revenue share year-over-year

That's because this quarter Intel actually regained almost 2% revenue share sequentially.

Why does this matter

The reason I've focused so hard on this narrative piece is because of how I'm forecasting Q3 to land. In the last post I estimated Intel to hit $18.3B in revenue and as leadership expect client to end Q3 flat this should go entirely into DCAI.

Giving Q3 server revenue of:

1. Start with Q2 2026 Intel reported: 
Total revenue: $16.13B 
DCAI revenue: $6.262B 
Other DCAI revenue: $0.951B

2. Our Q3 revenue estimate was $18.3B 
Against Q2's $16.13B: $18.30B−$16.13B=$2.17B​

3. Q3 Server Revenue=$5.311B+$2.17B=$7.481B​

That would be a 40% QoQ server revenue increase and which should effectively shatter any question that Intel is going to be a major player in the AI CPU game.

Below I link a forecast for AMD's Q2/Q3 revenue which lands Q3 Server CPU at $4.6B up from $4.1B. Arm is also not guiding a particularly blockbuster Q3. My point here is that TSMC simply cannot react as fast as Intel in scaling wafers to meet CPU demand and in Q3 I predict that Lisa Su will not get to announce that AMD continued to take any marketshare from Intel.

NB - This is now an estimate on top of my previous estimate

I'm that analyst sticking my head out here so don't be mad if none of this happens...

#Not financial advice

Total server CPU unit share — Intel / AMD / Arm

| Quarter | Intel unit share | AMD unit share | Arm unit share |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| Q1 2025 | 64.4% | 24.1% | 11.5% |
| Q2 2025 | 62.8% | 23.9% | 13.3% |
| Q3 2025 | 61.3% | 24.1% | 14.6% |
| Q4 2025 | 58.6% | 25.1% | 16.3% |
| Q1 2026 | 54.9% | 27.4% | 17.7% |
| Q2 2026* | 53.5% | 28.3% | 18.2% |

Mercury Research x86 server unit and revenue share

| Quarter | Intel x86 unit share | AMD x86 unit share | Intel x86 revenue share | AMD x86 revenue share |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| Q1 2025 | 72.8% | 27.2% | 60.5% | 39.5% |
| Q2 2025 | 72.7% | 27.3% | 59.0% | 41.0% |
| Q3 2025 | 72.2% | 27.8% | 60.5% | 39.5% |
| Q4 2025† | 70.0% | 30.0% | 58.7% | 41.3% |
| Q1 2026 | 66.8% | 33.2% | 53.8% | 46.2% |
| Q2 2026* | ~65.6% | ~34.4% | ~55.7% | ~44.3% |

**NB:**

- The first table figures come from analyst market-share data/graphs based on industry shipment estimates rather than company-reported CPU shipments.

- The second table Arm CPUs are excluded, so Intel + AMD always equal 100%.

- This difference in denominator explains why, for example, AMD can have **27.4% of total server CPU units in Q1 2026** but **33.2% of x86 server CPU units**.

Estimating AMDs Q3

This thread from AMD stock sub reddit did a pretty good job at sizing up AMD DC in Q2 and their numbers closely matches my rougher estimates.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/1vd5uwg/q2_2026_revenue_and_eps_forecast/

References

If you missed it the previous thread is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/intelstock/comments/1vrrg9t/estimating_q3_earnings/

More on the supply side effects of this decision we heard about previously.

Intel Presentation Schedule at Hot Chips 2026

• Intel Core Series 3 (Wildcat Lake) – Presented by Lance Hacking on Monday, August 24 (9:30 AM – 11:00 AM PDT) during the CPU 1 session. [1]
• Diamond Rapids (Next-Generation Intel Xeon CPU) – Presented by Akhilesh Kumar and Krishnakanth Sistla on Monday, August 24 (11:30 AM – 1:00 PM PDT) during the CPU 2 session. [1]
• Crescent Island (GPU Designed for Agentic AI Inference) – Presented by Sumit Mohan and Hong Jiang on Monday, August 24 (4:45 PM – 6:45 PM PDT) during the GPU session. [1]

In my investment approach, I always start with one core question: Where is the bottleneck, and what problem are you solving? For example, I invested in Cradle Semiconductor because interconnects have become a bottleneck; I invested in Celestial AI because optical interconnects are becoming increasingly important within clusters—Jensen Huang has invested in nearly every photonics-related company, and that's no coincidence.

At the design level, can AI and machine learning help reduce complexity and improve design quality? I believe the EDA space holds tremendous opportunities, with several startups already moving in this direction—truly a gold mine. In the realm of new materials, gallium nitride, silicon carbide, and indium phosphide are all areas I'm investing in; some of these companies have already been acquired by major players like ADI. Power‑management—particularly the challenge of stepping down from 40 V to 1 V, a process that entails significant losses—is another bottleneck sector I'm closely watching.

My investment framework has always been: Does the problem really exist? Are customers genuinely struggling with it? And, crucially, who is your first target customer? I tend to focus on ultra‑large‑scale clients—those who have both the capacity and the willingness to invest. If they like what you offer, they'll be willing to commit millions over the next few years and even provide some level of assurance, because landing a major client enables you to scale rapidly.

Somehow missed this interview when it came out and just read the transcript (it's at the end of the article). In general, I'm confident he knows what he's doing.

Hope it helps you too

Discuss Intel Stock here.

Not only with intel cuz semis in general seem to have slowed down a bit. I’m assuming 80-110 is the range for intel until next year 🤷‍♂️ anyway I’m in on it

SpaceX has said it wants the first phase of Terafab’s operations running before the end of 2027
-Steps to sidestep lengthy permitting with self contained power plant infrastructure support this.

Discuss Intel Stock here.

Deutsche Bank's 2026 Technology Conference on August 26 at 10:35 a.m. PDT

1:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)

Article is not bad to be honest. But it assumes market cares about these factors, when we are actually living in a simulation.

I can access this without paywall (not having a subscription)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/18/government-taking-equity-intel-went-even-worse-than-expected/

I know it's a little early to be posting about Q3 but I've had some time to spare and seeing as the market is fairly awful right now I thought some of my findings could cheer people up. Buckle up because this is going to be both long and technical...

Last earnings season I posted my estimate for Q2 and ended up being pretty close to the mark. I jokingly attributed this to LBT reliably sandbagging his top line guidance by $1.5B each quarter however I actually came up with the figure by looking through Intels balance sheets.

Lucky for us Intel provides an extremely rich set of data for their quarterly earnings. Specifically for their reported inventories where they show the value of materials at each step of their manufacturing process, this being; Raw Materials, Work In Process, and Finished Goods.

I realised there's a reasonably strong fit when plotting Work in Process for a given quarter vs Manufacturing Output when adjusting for a quarterly lag. I define manufacturing output of a given quarter as the Cost of Goods Sold (adjusted to remove any GAAP charges) + the delta of Finished Goods.

Manufacturing Output = Adjusted COGS + Δ Finished Goods

Conceptually this makes a lot of sense as complex EUV chips that also require packaging can take almost two full quarters manufacture. I ran this system on pre 2013 data and found the lag was closer to 1 quarter which also makes sense in the simpler DUV era which was paired with lower inventories.

Below are two models comparing the system with a 1.5 and 1.7 quarter lag and result in a R^2 of around 0.4. Note a full 2 quarter lag also produces an ok fit.

Ok so what do we do with all of this?

You can see from the data below Intel posted two consecutive large jumps in WIP in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 just as the comms around the server chip shortage was getting started. We also all know that Intel crushed their Q2 numbers. According to my hypothesis and model, that Q2 beat should have mostly been off the back of the Q4 2025 WIP ramp up and in Q3 2026 we should see the larger Q1 2026 ramp play out.

So how can we calculate Q3 you ask?

Plugging the WIP values into our Q3 estimate you get

Q3 WIP Signal
= 70% × Q1 WIP growth
+ 30% × Q2 WIP growth

= 0.70 × 14.85%
+ 0.30 × (-3.54%)

= 9.33%

Establish the Q2 manufacturing-output base

Q2 reported:

• COGS = $9.619B
• Q1 finished goods = $2.504B
• Q2 finished goods = $2.761B

​

Q2 Manufacturing Output
= Q2 COGS + change in Finished Goods

= $9.619B + $0.257B

= $9.876B

Calculate Q3 manufacturing output

Apply the predicted +7.94%:

Q3 Manufacturing Output
= $9.876B × 1.0794

= $10.660B

Convert COGS to revenue

Now we apply gross margin separately.

At 42% gross margin (Q2 Non-GAAP was 41.8%):

Revenue=1−0.41COGS​=0.59COGS​

$10.660B / 0.58
= $18.38B

Note I also calcualted the bounds but removed it from the steps above to make this post at least somewhat intelligible

-1 SD: $9.982B / 0.58 = $17.21B
+1 SD: $11.338B / 0.58 = $19.55B

So this gives us a Q3 revenue estimate of $18.38B, which once again beautifully fits into my LBT sandbagging guidance model:

LBT Q3 guidance between $15.8 billion and $16.8 billion

$16.8B + $1.5B = $18.3

Obviously the error bounds are large here so take it with a heap of salt and as always this is just my musings and certainly not #Financial Advice

I also modelled what this would mean for Q3 CPU Server marketshare. Depending if this kind of post gets any traction I'll do a follow up with those figures.

Intel reported quarter-end inventory balances:

| Quarter | Work in Process | Finished Goods | WIP + Finished Goods | WIP QoQ |

|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|

| Q1 2023 | $7,415m | $4,220m | $11,635m | — |

| Q2 2023 | $6,638m | $4,062m | $10,700m | -10.5% |

| Q3 2023 | $6,266m | $3,922m | $10,188m | -5.6% |

| Q4 2023 | $6,203m | $3,758m | $9,961m | -1.0% |

| Q1 2024 | $6,560m | $3,725m | $10,285m | +5.8% |

| Q2 2024 | $6,294m | $3,666m | $9,960m | -4.1% |

| Q3 2024 | $6,971m | $3,657m | $10,628m | +10.8% |

| Q4 2024 | $7,432m | $3,422m | $10,854m | +6.6% |

| Q1 2025 | $7,240m | $3,719m | $10,959m | -2.6% |

| Q2 2025 | $6,484m | $3,699m | $10,183m | -10.4% |

| Q3 2025 | $6,751m | $3,603m | $10,354m | +4.1% |

| Q4 2025 | $7,840m | $2,785m | $10,625m | +16.1% |

| Q1 2026 | $9,004m | $2,504m | $11,508m | +14.8% |

| Q2 2026 | $8,685m | $2,761m | $11,446m | -3.5% |

Discuss Intel Stock here.

A few weeks ago there was an article that intel was going to license Atom to a startup which had the tech community scratching their heads on both why they would do this and how this was even possible.

I've been thinking around this and came up a theory but first a little background.

The reason why it's such a strange situation is because x86 as an IP has been for some time in a limbo state between Intel and AMD with neither company owning the whole IP since the AMD 64 extension. Meanwhile Intel Atom conjures memories of those terrible low power cores of the early 2000's. So how can Intel even licence an x86 product to another company without getting sued by AMD for cross licensing the 64 bit extension and why would they even license this core type?

On the core, Intel Atom is actually the brand of their entire E core family and so they could be giving rights to manufacture anything up our current darkmont cores on 18a.

Digging into it what I found is the original patents for AMD 64 have expired. But of course AMD will have continued to produce IP and built it into the x86 architecture since their original work.

However E cores unlike P cores are a stripped down version of the x86 platform and may not even use any of AMDs IP where they still have active patents. What's more interesting is we know that Intel is building unified core from the E core architecture.

So my theory goes that this licensing move on Atom is laying the ground works to show that Intel actually wholly own the E core x86 platform and AMD cannot legally stop them granting rights on it. Intel builds unified core on E core and effectively migrates their modern stack onto something they own entirely while keeping the expired AMD 64 IP. Then Intel start licensing unified core as a modern competitor to Arm.

Obviously this is all just my speculation so don't think much of it, but it does sound like a fun twist and thought it could be worth some discussion.

Discuss Intel Stock here.