Intel (INTC): Nvidia Stake Buys Designs, Not Foundry Work

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) counts Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) among its largest shareholders, on a position that has quadrupled in value while leaving the question it was supposed to answer still open.

Nvidia bought 214.7 million Intel shares at $23.28 each, a $5 billion investment cleared by the Federal Trade Commission and settled in December 2025. With INTC trading around $97, that holding is worth roughly $21 billion.

The commercial substance of the deal is co-development rather than manufacturing. Intel designs custom data centre processors that Nvidia packages with its GPUs, linked by proprietary Nvidia interconnect technology that allows the two to communicate faster than standard interfaces permit. The two companies subsequently unveiled Intel x86 RTX SoCs, a product line that had reportedly been in development before either the government or Nvidia investment.

What the deal notably did not include was foundry work. Nvidia continues to manufacture its flagship processors at TSMC, and Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang was explicit at the time that there were no plans to change that. Reuters later reported that Nvidia evaluated Intel's 18A process and did not proceed.

That distinction is the heart of the INTC investment case. Intel Foundry needs external volume customers to justify its capital base. A design partnership with the largest AI chip company in the world is valuable, but it does not fill fabs.

Intel has said it is engaging lead customers on 14A, with the process design kit version 0.9 due in October.

Tech Seller USA supplies Intel server processors and NVIDIA data centre GPUs with exact OEM part numbers.