Intel Slumps Over 5%, $100 Level at Risk: BofA Warns Its Server CPU Share Will Be Cut in Half

TradingKey - On July 15, Eastern Time, Intel ( INTC) share price is approaching the $100 mark. As of press time, it was down 5.55% to $101.78.

On the news front, Intel's next-generation process technologies (including 18A and 14A) have both made significant progress. The yield rate of Intel's 18A process has increased from 65% in the previous quarter to 85%, second only to the 90% yield rate of TSMC's N2 process.

However, a research report from BofA Securities shows that although server CPU demand remains strong in 2026, Intel's market share is expected to decline from 41% to 24% in the new round of server CPU market competition.

[Source: TradingView]

The firm stated that the strong demand in the server market is mainly driven by large cloud computing vendors continuing to expand their AI infrastructure investment. BofA expects the global server CPU market size to grow from $35.2 billion in 2025 to $170.1 billion in 2030, representing a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.1%, higher than the previous forecast of $125 billion. Global server CPU shipments are expected to increase from 29.2 million units in 2025 to 74.7 million units in 2030, with a CAGR of 20.7%, while the average selling price is projected to rise from $1,204 to $2,277, representing a CAGR of 13.6%.

BofA noted that the biggest change in the new round of server CPU competition is the accelerated entry of the ARM architecture into data centers. BofA expects that by 2030, ARM-architecture CPUs will see their market share by revenue rise from 32% in 2025 to 50%. Among them, commercial ARM CPUs from Nvidia, Arm, and Qualcomm will account for about 36%, while self-developed CPUs from cloud providers such as Amazon AWS Graviton, Google Axion, and Microsoft Cobalt will account for about 15%.

During the period, Intel's market share is expected to decline from 41% to 24%, while AMD's share is expected to remain largely stable at 25% to 27%.

However, BofA emphasized that the increasing ARM share does not mean a shrinkage in x86 server CPU revenue. As the overall market is growing fast enough, both Intel and AMD are still expected to maintain revenue expansion. Intel's server CPU revenue is projected to grow from $14.4 billion in 2025 to $41.2 billion in 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of 23.4%.

Intel's advantages remain concentrated in traditional enterprise servers, software compatibility, security, and RAS reliability features. With the successive rollouts of Diamond Rapids and Coral Rapids, Intel is expected to gradually narrow the performance gap with its competitors.

BofA stated that although Intel faces a decline in PC sales, price hikes for server and PC processors, AI demand, and product margin improvements are expected to offset this impact.