Intel Corp.‘s stock hasn’t been following the AI trend so far this year, but it’s going up in Tuesday’s premarket trading after the company made a number of announcements about AI chips.
The company announced on Tuesday that its Xeon 6 processors would be available for use in data centres. From what Intel INTC, -0.86% said in a press release, the chips are meant to improve “performance and power efficiency for high-density, scale-out workloads.”
They also said that their Gaudi 2 and Gaudi 3 AI accelerator kits can be bought for up to a third of the price of similar platforms. Intel said in a release that putting together Xeon processors and Gaudi AI accelerators in a system is a powerful way to make AI faster, cheaper, and easier to use.
“One of the only companies in the world innovating across the full spectrum of the AI market opportunity,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. This includes PC, network, edge, and data centre systems, as well as the manufacturing of semiconductors.
Intel stock was up 1.5% in premarket trading on Tuesday. It had dropped 40% so far this year, making it the third-worst performer in the S&P 500 over that time.
The stock did well last year, going up 90%, but it hasn’t participated in this year’s AI rally because Wall Street isn’t sure how the company’s traditional strength in CPUs will help it now that GPUs are so important in AI applications.
Wall Street was wondering when Intel’s bottom would come after its last earnings report, which gave a bad outlook. Intel also recently separated its manufacturing financials from its product financials. This gives investors a clear picture of two businesses with different types of income. But those disclosures also made it clear that the foundry business is losing a lot of money.
Intel’s most recent news comes at the same time as the Computex trade show in Taiwan. It’s not just Nvidia Corp. (NVDA, +1.25%) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD, -2.18%) that showed off their chips at Computex recently.
