As a New CPU Surge Takes Wall Street, Tiger Global Just Took a New Stake in Intel Stock

Aanchal Sugandh

Mon, May 18, 2026 at 2:15 PM EDT 4 min read

Intel Corporation (INTC) has suddenly become one of Wall Street’s hottest comeback stories as a fresh central processing unit (CPU) rally is sweeping through the semiconductor sector. After spending years stuck in the shadows while Nvidia Corporation (NVDA) dominated the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, Intel now finds itself back in the thick of the conversation.

Wall Street is realizing that AI infrastructure cannot survive on graphics processing units (GPUs) alone. Training large AI models might still lean heavily on Nvidia’s accelerators, although AI inference and agentic workloads require massive amounts of general-purpose computing power. That trend has thrown CPUs back into the spotlight, putting Intel’s Xeon processors right at the center of the action.

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Big money has already started following the trail. Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management, one of the most closely watched hedge funds on Wall Street with nearly $78 billion in assets under management (AUM), opened a brand-new Intel position during Q1 2026. The fund purchased 1,638,700 shares valued at roughly $180 million, according to its latest 13F filing.

However, the company is still facing stiff competition from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSM) and Nvidia in advanced chip technology. If AI spending continues spreading beyond GPUs, the current CPU rally may or may not still have plenty of runway left.

About Intel Stock

Based in Santa Clara, Intel powers everything from household laptops to enormous data centers through its semiconductor technology. The company built its empire on x86 processors and now channels that legacy into AI, cloud computing, and advanced manufacturing.

Carrying a market cap of approximately $546.7 billion, the company has refused to sit on its hands, charging full steam ahead into foundry services and next generation chip architecture.

On the price performance front, Intel stock surged 393.26% over the past 52 weeks. The rally did not cool off in 2026 either as its shares climbed 189.54% year-to-date (YTD) along with another 55.97% jump during the last month alone.