In September, NVIDIA agreed to purchase $5 billion worth of Intel shares. On Monday, the deal finally became official, with NVIDIA buying 214 million shares at $23.28 per share, giving it a 4.4% ownership stake in one of the most consequential companies in semiconductor history.
Since the initial agreement, the value of NVIDIA’s stake has already risen to $7.5 billion, as Intel shares closed at $36.68 on Monday. But focusing only on the immediate gains misses the bigger picture of why this deal matters right now.
On 18 December, the transaction cleared a major regulatory hurdle when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved the purchase after months of scrutiny over whether NVIDIA’s dominance in AI chips, combined with a stake in Intel, could raise antitrust concerns. The FTC ultimately ruled that the 4.4% stake was small enough to move forward.
What NVIDIA And Intel Are Actually Building Together
Beyond the financials, NVIDIA and Intel are planning to co-develop multiple generations of chips for data centres and computing platforms.
At the heart of this partnership is NVIDIA’s NVLink technology, which will connect Intel and NVIDIA chips at extremely high speeds. With bandwidth reaching 1.8 TB/s, NVLink enables far tighter CPU-GPU integration than traditional PCIe connections, removing the bottlenecks that increasingly slow down AI workloads.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang described the partnership as: “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 CEO Lip-Bu Tan echoed the sentiment, saying: “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.”
In practical terms, Intel will manufacture NVIDIA-custom x86 CPUs for data centres that integrate directly into NVIDIA’s AI architecture. For consumer and enterprise PCs, Intel plans to build system-on-chips that combine x86 CPUs with NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets, blurring the traditional lines between processor roles.
A Lifeline For Intel
This deal comes at a critical moment for Intel. The company reported an $18.8 billion loss in 2024, its first annual loss since 1986, after years of strategic missteps, fierce competition, and heavy spending on manufacturing expansion.
NVIDIA’s investment will not fix those problems overnight, but it offers Intel something it urgently needs: time and credibility — a lifeline that could help stabilise the company while it attempts to reinvent itself.
NVIDIA’s Spending Spree Continues
For NVIDIA, the Intel stake is part of a much broader investment campaign that has already topped $120 billion, including its planned $100 billion investment in OpenAI and its recently announced $20 billion Groq deal.
Although NVIDIA officially labelled the Groq deal a non-exclusive licensing agreement rather than a full acquisition, it still underscores how aggressively the company is positioning itself across the AI value chain.
Ogbonda Chivumnovu
The Geopolitical Layer
The deal also fits neatly into a growing global AI race. In August, the U.S. government took a $10 billion stake in Intel, citing national security and supply-chain resilience.
NVIDIA’s move aligns with that strategy, reinforcing the US ambition to become a dominant AI chip production powerhouse, especially as competition with China intensifies.
Why This Matters
For NVIDIA, the upside is control and optionality. For Intel, it is a rare chance at reinvention. As demand for AI computing continues to surge, this partnership could help define who shapes the next era of semiconductors — and who struggles to survive it.
