Intel Stock Hits $85 Record as Wall Street Upgrades Flood In

After reporting better-than-expected earnings for the first quarter of 2026, Intel (INTC) stock rose more than 28% to about $83. It briefly hit a record high of $85.22, which was the company's all-time high and put its market value above $416 billion.

Before the market opened on Monday, shares went up another 2% to $84.30. This was part of Wall Street's ongoing trend of raising price goals, as at least 23 brokerages did so in the days after the print.

In 2026, the stock has gone up by more than twice as much. It's up to the market to decide if the story of Intel's turnaround still has room to run at 90 times forward earnings or if it has already been priced in.

The Earnings That Triggered the Surge

The Q1 numbers were not easy to beat. The $13.58 billion in sales was more than $1 billion more than the $12.42 billion that was expected. The 1–2 cent estimate was smashed by the 29-cent non-GAAP EPS. The revenue from the data center and AI segment hit $5.1 billion, which is 22% more than the same time last year. This was due to higher server CPU demand from agentic AI workloads. Guidance for Q2 revenue of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion and EPS of 20 cents both easily beat analyst expectations.

The tone from management was much more upbeat than in previous quarters. CEO Lip-Bu Tan described the comeback as a story about the company's balance sheet and how well it was carrying out its plans. It was not a story about a turnaround that had not yet been proven. The market aggressively lowered the price of Intel after seeing both a big number beat and a believable forward story.

The Upgrade Wave: Who Said What and Why

Citi made the big change by changing its rating from "Neutral" to "Buy" and raising its price goal from $48 to $95. The bank's main point was that server CPU demand would continue to rise because of agentic AI, which is the move toward self-driving AI systems that need steady CPU processing instead of short bursts of GPU processing. Citi made it clear that Intel will benefit a lot from Elon Musk's Terafab project. Chips for Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI will be made with Intel's new 14A process node.

KeyBanc was the most aggressive. It raised its goal from $70 to $110, which is now the new high on the street, but kept its Overweight rating. KeyBanc pointed to the 22% growth in data centers, the rise in the gross margin to 41% due to higher prices and better yields on Intel's 18A process, and signs that foundry agreements for 14A are likely to come later this year. Benchmark went from $76 to $105, and it is still a Buy. On Wall Street, the average price target went up from $46.50 to $75 in just one month. However, that's still less than Intel's present trading level of $83.

The Intel Foundry Story: 18A Yields Improving, 14A Commitments Building

That's where the long-term bull case lives, and that's also where the short-term performance risk is largest. 18KeyBanc says that yield gains are very important because higher yields mean that there are more usable chips per wafer. This directly boosts gross margins and makes Intel's production more competitive with TSMC's 2-nanometer node.

The bigger prize is 14A, Intel's next-generation process node that will come out in 2028. Tan said on the earnings call that "multiple customers are actively evaluating" the technology and that work on 14A is moving faster than on 18A. Musk's partnership with Terafab shows that there is a foundry anchor customer ready to commit to 14A while it's still being developed. This is exactly the kind of long-term commitment that shows external investors that Intel's manufacturing plan is a good one.

Google's promise to use multiple generations of Intel CPUs for AI data center workloads, along with rumors of possible deals with Apple and Amazon, would be the external foundry customer gain that completes the story of the turnaround if they come true.

The Valuation Debate: 90x Forward Earnings Is Not a Cheap Entry

Now, Intel trades at about 90 times expected earnings, which is a very high multiple for a company that has spent most of the last four years restoring its reputation. That price level either means that current earnings are much lower than usual (the bull case) or that the market is pricing in the best-case scenario for a recovery (the risk case).

TipRanks currently shows a Hold consensus, with 10 Buy ratings, 22 Hold ratings, and 3 Sell ratings. This distribution shows that analysts aren't sure what to think, not because they are sure in either way. Intel's current trading price is $83, so the median goal of about $75 is below that. This means that even after 23 upgrades, the consensus is not pushing the stock higher.

The bear case makes sense: the 28% one-day move and the following pre-market gains have soaked up most of the short-term good news. Intel is still losing money—its Q1 net loss grew to $4.28 billion—because of the costs of reorganizing and investing in new equipment. The Ohio factory won't open until 2030. For 18A's higher yields to become a fully viable external foundry business, it needs customers who have spent years building supply chains around TSMC and have to pay a lot to switch.

Intel's Q1 results shifted the burden of proof from bulls to sceptics — the turnaround has empirical support now that it lacked six months ago. 

There is a real rise in CPU power in AI tasks, Terafab and Google are working together, and yields are getting better. At $83–$85 and 90x forward earnings, the stock price may have already priced in the recovery. The question is whether KeyBanc's $110 target, which requires Intel to turn rising demand for AI CPUs into long-term revenue growth and show that it has foundry ambitions, is a 12-month target that can be reached.

For buyers here, the decision is less about whether Intel had a good quarter and more about whether the next phase of the turnaround arrives fast enough to justify the new multiple.