Intel CEO Tan reports progress on balance sheet, foundry strategy, and sees CPU demand rising from agentic AI workloads

Tan said Intel received support from the U.S. government (with some CHIPS program funding converted into equity), NVIDIA ($5 billion investment), and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son to strengthen its balance sheet, which he described as "pretty horrible" when he arrived in March 2025.

Intel 18A yield has improved by about 7% per month and is ahead of the company's year-end target; Intel 14A risk production is planned for 2028, with volume production in 2029, which Tan said is around the same timing as TSMC's A14. Tan also said the company is working on future 10A and 7A roadmaps because customers want to see a long-term manufacturing path.

Tan said agentic AI (AI systems that make decisions and perform tasks autonomously) is increasing CPU importance in data centers, with customer feedback pointing to higher CPU intensity—some customers discussing one-to-one ratios of CPUs to GPUs, and others describing four CPUs for one GPU, compared with the previous one CPU for eight GPUs in training workloads.

Tan said customers have expressed enough interest in Intel's advanced packaging technology, including EMIB-T, that Intel asked whether they would help with substrate prepayments amid supply shortages, and customers committed billions of dollars over the next few years rather than "few million" dollars.