Beneath the Surface
George Gilder: Intel: Sell the Rumors, Await the News
October 8, 2025 • 6 minute, 36 second read
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
–Andy Grove, Intel Founder
October 8, 2025 — The remarkable 50% pop in Intel’s (INTC) stock over just a few weeks is, well, worth remarks.
What it is not worth, at this early point, is your investment. The stock surge is driven by half a dozen or so rumors and plans. Few of them seem especially likely to materialize or be profitable for many years, if ever. The one real deal in the array of wishes is with Nvidia (NVDA), and even that deal tends to confirm the unlikelihood of the others.
The rumor of the moment is that AMD (AMD) will become a lead customer for Intel Foundry Services (IFS), switching some of its manufacturing needs from Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM). There are multiple reasons this is unlikely in the near or even middle term.
Like most of the rumored upside for Intel, the AMD hope is premised on Intel succeeding where it has most conspicuously failed. As our colleague Robert Castellano has pointed out in the past, the idea here is that Intel will prosper by manufacturing chips for others that it could not manufacture for itself. Throughout all Intel’s woes, it has continued to succeed in designing outstanding products. Its failures have been on the manufacturing or foundry side.
IFS: Heal Thyself
Nothing indicates that these problems have been solved. So great have been Intel’s challenges on the manufacturing side that rather than being a rival to TSMC, it has become a customer, with TSMC manufacturing leading-edge chips at the three-nanometer generation because Intel could not do so itself.
Other more mundane considerations also make an AMD deal unlikely. The two companies for decades have been competitors and remain so to this day. Nearly all of CEO Lisa Su’s remarkable success in turning AMD from an also ran into a first line company have come at Intel’s expense. Her incentive to throw her great rival a lifeline appears vanishingly small.
Even if AMD wanted to do this, manufacturing success in this industry is something that requires years to achieve and even more years to confirm. No doubt Intel would be able to manufacture some usable chips for AMD. The question, as always, is what percentage of good chips will come off the line. Will the yield be 10% or 80% or perhaps even higher? The percentage of good chips is the most critical economic factor in choosing a manufacturing partner. Yields of 60% or 70% may sound impressive and even be impressive in the early stages. And yet these hypothetically impressive yields might still fail economically in the face of TSMC producing 90% usable chips.
Even if Intel ultimately succeeded, disappointments along the way are all but guaranteed. Buy the rumor and sell the news is one of the oldest of investment nostrums. Yet as Intel’s stock gets more expensive on the rumors, the likelihood is overwhelming that missteps, major or minor, could tank the stock. The resulting volatility could see this once great company’s shares jump another 50% or fall off by everything it has gained and more. We have no wish to go along with that ride.
Apple, Really?
Even less plausible are the rumors that Apple (AAPL) will ride to Intel’s rescue. This rumor is not even as well-defined as the alleged upside turn at AMD. Various versions have Apple as an investor in the troubled old company or an undefined “strategic partner.” In some versions, the rumor has Apple becoming a customer for Intel foundry services.
These rumor mongers seem to have short memories. Intel’s repeated failure to deliver satisfactory chips that Apple wanted to buy were a nontrivial factor in the very launch of “Apple Silicon.” Intel’s failures created both the need and the opportunity for Apple to go out on its own.
No more likely in the near term are the rumors that TSMC will become a manufacturing partner or even investor in Intel’s foundry efforts. TSM has committed to investing at least $65 billion in its first three advanced fabs in Phoenix. In March of this year, TSMC announced plans to add another $100 billion to its U.S. investment. The theory here is that TSMC would add three more Arizona fabs, two advanced packaging sites, and a significant research and development facility. Even if, as seems not unlikely, these plans turn out to be vaporware manufactured to please the Trump administration, they are not consistent with the notion of TSM investing additional billions in Intel’s manufacturing capabilities that would compete with TSMC’s own plans.
Any of these rumors could become realities at some point. But investors must measure those possibilities against the likelihood of repeated disappointments and negative announcements along the way. A decade of disappointments and delays in great plans to turn around this once great company have primed the market to overreact to any negative news on INTC even as it is now overreacting to mere rumors.
NVIDIA Deal: Exception That Proves the Rule
Amidst all these fond hopes, one deal is real and public. NVIDIA (NVDA) will invest some $5 billion and perhaps more to save the older company. The two have announced what seemed to be very real plans to develop central processing units (CPUs) to equip both data centers and personal computers with devices that will better support and integrate with Nvidia’s graphical processing units (GPUs). There is yet no indication that Intel’s foundries will do the actual manufacturing of such chips. Any announcement that Intel would be the manufacturer as opposed to TSMC would make the success of the project only less likely.
Finally, much of the recovery in Intel’s stock can be attributed to the apparent commitment of the U.S. government to revive the company, as witnessed by the Trump administration’s decision to acquire 10% of Intel’s stock. Far from being positive, the U.S. government investment virtually guarantees that Intel will invest more financial and intellectual capital in what it does worst. The government using its vast influence and resources to steer Intel back into its failed manufacturing endeavors is about the worst news that could develop for this beleaguered company. The Trump administration gives every appearance of reducing Intel to a political slogan rather than restoring it to the great company it once was.
All these rumors could work out to Intel’s benefit. That’s something no investor can know. What we can know is that the road to recovery will be a rocky one, fraught with disappointments along the way. It is all but certain that at some point, Intel stock will once again be far cheaper than it is today. And at that later date, investors will have far more information to be able to judge the likely success of the promised comeback. We’re not going to buy the rumors. We will wait for the news.
George Gilder
Grey Swan Investment Fraternity
P.S. from Addison: This is another of George’s recent essays, looking at some of the nuance needed to keep your wits — and wealth — in today’s rapidly-inflating AI stock bubble. We look forward to exploring that nuance when George joins us on Grey Swan Live! tomorrow.
George once handed President Reagan the first microchip, and now he says today’s tech wave dwarfs the original $6.5 trillion tech revolution of the 1980s.
Eight exponential technologies — AI, quantum computing, robotics, self-driving cars, blockchain, chips, advanced biotech, and even space — are no longer advancing in isolation.
They’re colliding, compounding, and accelerating into what could be the single greatest wealth-building event of our lifetimes.
The pace is staggering.
George just issued new research with our colleague Ian King, which you can review here before Grey Swan Live!
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