Intel’s Data Centre Revenue Jumped Nearly 80%, Its Best Growth in 15 Years

October 30 — On the earnings call for its third quarter of fiscal 2026 (28 June to 26 September 2026), held at 2pm Pacific on Thursday 29 October, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the Data Center and AI (DCAI) business was the quarter’s biggest highlight, delivering its strongest revenue growth in 15 years and lifting overall results above expectations.

Intel’s quarterly revenue was $16.5 billion (about 110.2 billion yuan), up 21% year on year; DCAI revenue was $7.3 billion (about 48.8 billion yuan), up nearly 80% — its strongest growth in 15 years.

Tan said Granite Rapids (Intel 3 process) has become one of the fastest-ramping server products, that the first Intel 18A server chip, Clearwater Forest, has shipped and been recognised as revenue, and that demand for 2027 looks very strong, especially for high-density CPUs and rack-scale infrastructure for AI agents.

DCAI posted an operating profit of $3 billion (about 20 billion yuan), 42% of the segment’s revenue, up $600 million quarter on quarter. Intel offered a new view of AI infrastructure: GPUs are good at AI “thinking” tasks, while CPUs are more energy-efficient for lookup-type work; even on conservative estimates, the addressable market for CPUs aimed at digital agents over the next five years is enormous.

Tan said purpose-built silicon remains Intel’s fastest-growing business, having tripled in scale over the past three years, and it is expected to triple again in the coming years.

In PC client, he said that even as revenue at the Client Computing and Physical AI group fell 5% year on year, AI PC revenue still grew 35%; the edge business proved resilient, with edge and physical AI continuing to win new customer design wins.

Panther Lake (Intel 18A) has completed its production ramp; Wildcat Lake is sold out and shipping up about 70% quarter on quarter; Nova Lake (the first Intel 18A-P client chip) is ahead of schedule and is expected to launch with twice as many customer design wins as Panther Lake.

In foundry, Intel 3 and Intel 18A yields kept improving this quarter, with Intel 18A improving by a double-digit margin and wafer output at both nodes beating internal expectations.

Intel 18A-P is due to land in internal products by the end of the year as planned, with external customer work expanding; the next-generation Intel 14A is on track and in October shipped a high-quality version 0.9 process design kit to selected customers, meeting industry yield and performance standards on release.

On the corporate turnaround, Tan said Intel has completed a major organisational reset over the past 18 months — cutting headcount and middle-management layers, rebuilding an engineering-first culture, simplifying the product line and refreshing product and foundry roadmaps — though management says much work remains.

Beyond its traditional x86 CPU business, Intel is betting on three new hundred-billion-dollar-class tracks: purpose-built silicon, advanced packaging and external foundry. Revenue there is still small, but momentum is strong.