NVIDIA Invests $5B in Intel for AI Infrastructure

NVIDIA and Intel Corp., rival microprocessor makers competing for AI marketshare, are partnering to jointly develop multiple generations of custom data center and PC products targeting hyperscale, enterprise and consumer markets.

The companies plan to connect NVIDIA and Intel architectures via NVIDIA NVLink—combining NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing with Intel’s CPU technologies and x86 ecosystem.

For data centers, Intel will build NVIDIA-custom x86 CPUs that NVIDIA will integrate into its AI infrastructure platforms.

NVIDIA will invest $5 billion in Intel’s common stock at a purchase price of $23.28 per share. The investment is subject to customary closing conditions, including required regulatory approvals. This gives NVIDIA roughly a 4% stake in Intel. 

Control on the Overall Architecture

Both CPUs and GPUs are essential components of the hardware stacks needed for AI workloads. As an investor in Intel, NVIDIA now has more sway over how the two processors work together. In the latest professional workstations, Intel Xeon CPUs and NVIDIA RTX GPUs are a popular pairing. 

“AI is powering a new industrial revolution and reinventing every layer of the computing stack—from silicon to systems to software. At the heart of this reinvention is NVIDIA’s CUDA architecture,” said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang in a statement. “This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel’s CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem—a fusion of two world-class platforms.”

“Intel’s x86 architecture has been foundational to modern computing for decades—and we are innovating across our portfolio to enable the workloads of the future,” said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel. “Intel’s leading data center and client computing platforms, combined with our process technology, manufacturing and advanced packaging capabilities, will complement NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing leadership to enable new breakthroughs for the industry.”

History of Rivalry

NVIDIA was originally a GPU maker targetting the gaming and video industry. In the last two decades, the company swiftly pivoted to AI, making its GPUs the driving force in the emerging market. In 2024, Reuters revealed, "NVIDIA has quietly begun designing central processing units (CPUs) that would run Microsoft’s Windows operating system and use technology from Arm Holdings." The company also makes a data center-targetted CPU, dubbed Grace, based on Arm architecture. Today the compnay's net worth stands at $4 trillion. 

Intel has always been the de facto CPU maker for the personal PC and professional workstation market. The company made a number of faltered attempts to develop its own GPU, the latest being Intel Gaudi, but in the end, settled on integrated graphics—graphics processors that are integrated into the CPU's architecture. The company struggled to compete in the AI sector, partly because NVIDIA's GPU-based CUDA programming language dominates the landscape. The partnership with NVIDIA gives Intel another opportunity to go after the AI market. Intel's market cap stands at $142 billion. 

After news broke that NVIDIA is investing in Intel, Intel shares jumped 26%—"the biggest single day move in decades," according to Benzinga. 

NVIDIA and Intel's corporate handshake put pressure on AMD, which produces both GPUs and CPUs, and is also vying for AI market share.