ON FEBRUARY 24, PRESIDENT TRUMP IS
EXPECTED TO SIGN HIS FINAL ONE — EVER!
Ian King here with some very big news.
After 220 Executive Orders in one year. And with nearly three full years left in office…
I have learned the unthinkable…
On February 24th, President Trump is expected to issue what I believe will be his FINAL Executive Order.
I know that sounds crazy …
I didn’t believe it myself.
But then I saw all the details of the leak — coming directly from inside the White House — and I knew right away this was going to be a huge and shocking announcement.
I was able to get the full story for you here.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Strategic Fortunes
Intel Stock Is Priced for Ruin, But the AI Offensive Is Here
By Jeffrey Neal Johnson. Article Posted: 2/9/2026.
Summary
- The company has launched a unified roadmap targeting the lucrative artificial intelligence inference market with new discrete graphics processors and cooling technology.
- Strategic partnerships with industry leaders and significant government support validate the manufacturing capabilities and ensure a stable capital foundation for growth.
- Management is prioritizing high-margin data center products to navigate temporary supply bottlenecks and rebuild inventory levels for stronger performance later this year.
Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) is at the center of a high-stakes tug-of-war on Wall Street. Two competing narratives are playing out in real time, producing significant volatility and confusion for retail investors. On one side, the company has launched an aggressive strategic offensive, including a return to the discrete GPU market and a major partnership with SoftBank (OTCMKTS: SOBKY). On the other side, operations are flashing warning signs, with confirmed reports of severe supply shortages affecting the important Chinese market.
This friction between a revitalized long-term vision and immediate logistical hurdles has left Intel's stock price hovering in the upper $40s. While headlines about delivery delays are alarming, they likely represent temporary headwinds. For investors willing to look beyond the next two quarters, Intel's shift from a defensive posture to an offensive artificial intelligence (AI) strategy creates a disconnect between the current share price and the company's future value.
The AI Offensive: Brains and Memory
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Get the full story on this opportunity now.Since late January, Intel has signaled it no longer wants to be just a manufacturer for other chip designers. Under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the company is consolidating a unified roadmap that addresses both compute power and memory storage.
The most notable update in early February was Intel's announcement that it is re-entering the discrete GPU market. This is not a repeat of prior gaming efforts; the company is specifically targeting the AI inference market. While firms like NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) dominate model training, inference—actually running models to generate results—is expected to become the largest segment of the AI industry.
To pursue that opportunity, Intel introduced Project Crescent Island. Built on the Xe3P architecture and optimized for inference tasks, Crescent Island's key differentiator is its form factor. Unlike many power-hungry competitors that often require complex and costly liquid cooling, Crescent Island is designed for air cooling. That makes it easier and cheaper for standard data centers to deploy, potentially lowering the barrier to adoption for enterprise customers.
Backing up this technical pivot is the hire of Eric Demers as Chief GPU Architect. Demers, formerly of Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) and AMD (NASDAQ: AMD), is a heavyweight in the industry. His arrival signals that Intel is again attracting top-tier engineering talent capable of executing complex designs.
At the same time, Intel is tackling one of AI's biggest bottlenecks: memory. The company finalized a partnership with SoftBank to co-develop Z-Angle memory (ZAM). Current AI chips are constrained by the scarcity and cost of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). This partnership aims to create a new industry standard by 2029 that stacks memory more efficiently, positioning Intel Foundry not just as a factory but as a center of innovation driving the industry forward.
The China Problem: A Capacity Crisis
Despite the strategic clarity, operations on the ground are strained. Reports on Feb. 6 confirmed that Intel notified customers in China of delivery delays extending up to six months for its Xeon server processors. The news immediately pressured the stock and raised concerns about first-half 2026 revenue.
It is important to understand the root cause: this is a capacity problem, not a demand problem. During the fourth-quarter earnings call, CFO David Zinsner stated the company's buffer inventory is depleted—Intel essentially sold every chip it had in inventory in 2025.
The company entered 2026 in a hand-to-mouth position. Semiconductor manufacturing cannot be accelerated overnight; increasing wafer starts today leads to finished chips months later. The current six-month delay in China is the tangible result of that production lead time. While this creates a temporary revenue shortfall and softer guidance for the quarter, it also confirms a bullish underlying trend: x86 architecture remains central to global infrastructure. Demand is robust, but the supply chain needs time to catch up. This is a logistical hurdle, not a structural decline.
Priced for Disaster, Built for Success
The tension between strategic growth and supply constraints has depressed Intel's valuation to historically low levels. The stock is trading at roughly 2x price-to-book, while higher-growth semiconductor peers often trade between 7x and 10x. That valuation gap suggests the market is pricing Intel for structural failure—a thesis the financials do not support.
Investors should remember several forms of downside protection that create a hard floor for the stock:
- Government Backing: The U.S. government holds an approximately 10% equity stake in the company, effectively designating Intel as a national champion and reducing the likelihood of bankruptcy.
- Strategic Investment: Late in 2025, NVIDIA invested $5 billion in Intel, a stamp of approval from an industry leader that validates Intel's manufacturing capabilities and provides capital support.
- Cash Fortress: Intel's balance sheet is strong—$37.4 billion in cash and short-term investments at the end of 2025.
This liquidity gives Intel ample runway to navigate current supply shortages without resorting to expensive financing. The company is turning away orders because it is in high demand, not because it is obsolete.
Patience Pays: Looking Past the Noise
Current volatility reflects two timelines colliding. The supply shortages in China are a short-term weather event—painful but transient. The GPU pivot and SoftBank partnership represent a permanent shift in the company's trajectory, positioning Intel to capture the next wave of AI spending.
For traders seeking a quick win over the coming weeks, supply-chain headlines present meaningful risk. For investors with a horizon beyond the next two quarters, the current share price looks like a discounted entry point. Intel is consolidating a cohesive roadmap that spans manufacturing, memory, and compute. As yields improve and inventory buffers rebuild later this year, the market will likely re-price the stock on its strategic future rather than its immediate logistical challenges.
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