Prediction: This Will Be Intel's Stock Price by Year-End 2027

Two years ago, it seemed like nobody wanted to touch Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). The company that basically invented the modern chip industry had turned into its own cautionary tale, posting an $18.8 billion net loss for 2024 while it fell behind Nvidia in artificial intelligence (AI) and behind Taiwan's foundries in manufacturing.

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Then something strange happened. The U.S. government bought a stake in Intel. So did Nvidia. So did SoftBank. Companies and governments don't usually hand over billions to a business they think is finished, and that's the real reason I think the next 14 months matter more for this stock than almost any stretch in Intel's recent history.

The chip that actually has to work

Turnarounds aren't real until a real, working product ships, and Intel is finally shipping. In July, the company said its newest Arizona fab had entered high-volume manufacturing on a subset of its Core Ultra Series 3 chips, known as Panther Lake, the first processor built on Intel 18A, which Intel calls the most advanced semiconductor process ever developed and manufactured in the United States. Its second-quarter 2026 release adds that the next node behind it, 18A-P, had already entered risk production, meaning Intel isn't just trying to catch up on one generation, it's trying to stay on pace for the one after. On the data center side, that same release says Intel also launched Xeon 6+, its first server chip built on 18A.

Why the smartest money in the room bought in anyway

Money talks, and in 2025 three very different yet massive buyers said the same thing with their wallets. The U.S. government invested $8.9 billion in Intel common stock, structured largely out of unpaid CHIPS Act and Secure Enclave funding, in exchange for roughly 275 million shares and warrants for up to 241 million more. Nvidia added $5 billion, and SoftBank put in another $2 billion, both also in Intel common stock. None of this money really guarantees Panther Lake sells well, or that Intel's foundry business ever turns a real profit. But I think it's an odd thing to do if you think a company is circling the drain, and you don't have any faith in it.

That said, I won't pretend this is a clean story. Intel raised another $20 billion through a common stock offering this past August, priced at $95 a share. A raise that size dilutes existing shareholders even while it shores up the balance sheet. That's on top of the hundreds of millions of shares discussed above already issued to the government, Nvidia, and SoftBank, which means every dollar of future profit gets split more ways than it used to. Retail (the common investor) is getting the short end of the stick.

Standing up a brand-new manufacturing process at scale is also genuinely hard, and Intel has fallen behind schedule before, more than once. Betting on this stock right now means betting the company actually fixed what broke, not just that it bought itself more time with other people's money.

So, where does that leave the stock?

Here's my honest number and take: I'm bullish on this stock. If Panther Lake ramps the way Intel says it's ramping, and 18A proves it can carry more than one product line, I'd expect Intel shares to trade somewhere in the $110 to $130 range by the end of 2027, a real step up from where they sit today in the low $90s.

If the ramp stumbles, or foundry customers stay lukewarm, I'd expect something closer to the high $60s to low $80s instead. What tips me toward the higher end isn't optimism for its own sake, it's that the parties with the most information, the federal government, Nvidia, and SoftBank, all put real money in before the comeback was proven. I'd really rather follow that money than bet against it.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intel and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.