Intel's bear case is in its own filing

What the filing concedes

Intel's FY2025 annual report, filed on 2026-01-23, does not read like a company describing a position it is defending. It states that "we have lost market share in recent years, including in both client and data center markets, in the market for x86-based semiconductor products, and more generally in the markets for semiconductor compute products, as competitors have introduced highly competitive data center and client platform products" ^[1].

On the data-centre side it is more specific about the cause. The business "has been further negatively impacted in the past few years by the significant shift of customer spend toward GPUs optimized for AI workloads" ^[1] — the AI build-out that lifted the rest of this universe is named, in Intel's own filing, as a thing that happened to it.

Three years that went nowhere

The top line has been flat to slightly down for three years ^[1]:

• Net revenue: $52,853 million in 2025, $53,101 million in 2024, $54,228 million in 2023
• Gross margin: 34.8%, 32.7%, 40.0% across the same three years
• Net income attributable to Intel: $(267) million, $(18,756) million, $1,689 million

The 2025 loss is small enough to look like a return to breakeven, and against 2024 it is. Against 2023 it is a company earning nothing on roughly the same revenue at six points less gross margin.

The filing also names a structural reason margin does not simply recover with volume: "Some of our higher-priced products, however, have lower margins as they are produced at external foundries rather than in our manufacturing facilities" ^[1]. Intel's premium mix is partly made by somebody else.

The counter-thesis is a process node

Against that, the filing puts process technology, and it is no longer only a roadmap. "In 2025, we released our initial Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, the first products to be manufactured using our new Intel 18A process technology" ^[1]. The node's claim is specific: "Intel 18A introduces two industry firsts in high-volume semiconductor manufacturing: gate-all-around transistors (RibbonFET) and backside power delivery (PowerVia)" ^[1].

The generation after it is pointed outward rather than inward. Intel 14A "has been designed from inception as an offering to external customers" ^[1] — a sentence about who Intel intends to sell manufacturing to, not about what it intends to build for itself.

The ramp is being paid for in the meantime. 2025 gross margin absorbed "$878 million of higher 2025 inventory reserves, primarily related to lower of cost or net realizable value charges for products manufactured on the early ramp of our Intel 18A process node" ^[1].

What the foundry has actually signed

The external foundry business the 14A sentence is aimed at is, in the public record, still small and not at the leading edge. The clearest signed example remains the September 2023 agreement under which Tower Semiconductor committed to invest up to $300 million in equipment installed at Intel's 300mm Fab 11X in Rio Rancho, New Mexico ^[2]. That deal is for 65-nanometer power-management flows ^[2] — real external revenue, and three nodes' worth of distance from what 14A is being offered as.

Two numbers pointing the other way

A company whose recovery rests on process leadership spent less on developing it. Research and development fell to $13,774 million in 2025 from $16,546 million in 2024 ^[1]. Capital investment classified as construction in progress fell too, to $34.5 billion at the end of 2025 from $50.4 billion a year earlier ^[1].

Both are consistent with discipline after a $(18,756) million year ^[1]. Both are also the two lines you would least expect to fall at a company whose stated plan is to out-manufacture its competition.

What the record does not say

The filing does not name an external 14A customer, date a commitment from one, or state a volume. It describes a node designed for customers and does not identify them ^[1]. Everything above is what the record states; whether 18A and 14A convert a conceded loss of share into a recovery is not something the filing answers, and nothing else cited here answers it either.