AMD and Intel hit ATHs as agentic AI demand lifts chip stocks

AMD and Intel shares climbed to new all time highs Friday as Wall Street continued to reward chipmakers tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure and rising demand for central processing units.

AMD rose about 9% to roughly $443, lifting its market capitalization to about $720 billion, while Intel gained about 14% to around $124, pushing its market value near $627 billion at press time.

The rally followed AMD’s stronger than expected first quarter results earlier this week. The company reported revenue of $10.3 billion, up 38% from a year earlier, while data center revenue jumped 57% to $5.8 billion, driven by demand for AMD EPYC processors and the continued ramp of AMD Instinct GPU shipments.

Wall Street analysts have turned increasingly bullish on AMD after the report, with Reuters noting that at least 20 brokerages raised their price targets following the company’s forecast and its expanding exposure to AI infrastructure demand.

AMD CEO Lisa Su told CNBC this week that agentic AI is accelerating demand across the compute market. “Agents are really driving tremendous demand in the overall AI adoption cycle, and we’re very excited to be in the middle of it,” Su said during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street.

Intel’s rally has been fueled by a separate but related bet: that AI inference and agentic applications will revive demand for CPUs while strengthening the company’s foundry story. Intel reported first quarter revenue of $13.6 billion in April, up 7% from a year earlier, with non GAAP EPS of $0.29.

CEO Lip Bu Tan said on the company’s earnings call that the CPU is reasserting itself as an “indispensable foundation of the AI era,” arguing that AI services are creating new demand for general purpose compute.

The stock also gained momentum after reports that Apple had opened early stage talks with Intel and Samsung to produce main processors for future devices in the US. Intel shares surged earlier this week on the report, reaching a record high before extending gains Friday.

Intel’s April rally was also supported by several major developments. The company expanded its partnership with Google to advance AI infrastructure, including work on custom infrastructure processing units, and said it would join Elon Musk’s Terafab AI chip complex project with SpaceX and Tesla.

The US government’s 9.9% stake in Intel has also helped reinforce sentiment around the company’s turnaround. Intel and the Trump administration announced the $8.9 billion investment in August 2025 as part of a broader push to support domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

Intel’s stock jumped 114% in April, marking its best month in its 55 years on the Nasdaq, according to Barron’s. The move pushed Intel back into the center of the AI trade after years of market share losses and manufacturing delays.