AMD and Intel reach record highs on AI demand

Cryptobriefing reports that AMD and Intel reached new all-time highs on May 8, 2026, as AI-related demand bolstered chip stocks. Per Cryptobriefing, AMD shares rose to roughly $443, lifting its market capitalization to about $720 billion, and Intel shares rose to around $124, pushing its market value near $627 billion at press time. Cryptobriefing reports AMD posted first-quarter revenue of $10.3 billion, up 38% year over year, with data center revenue of $5.8 billion, up 57%, driven by demand for AMD EPYC processors and a continued ramp of AMD Instinct GPU shipments. Cryptobriefing reports Intel posted first-quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, up 7% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.29. Cryptobriefing cites Reuters as reporting that at least 20 brokerages raised AMD price targets after the results.

Cryptobriefing quotes AMD CEO Lisa Su on CNBC saying, "Agents are really driving tremendous demand in the overall AI adoption cycle, and we're very excited to be in the middle of it." Cryptobriefing also reports Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan said on the company's earnings call that the CPU is reasserting itself as an "indispensable foundation of the AI era." Cryptobriefing notes additional developments supporting Intel's rally, including reported early-stage talks between Apple and Intel and Samsung on producing main processors in the US, an expanded Intel-Google partnership on AI infrastructure and custom infrastructure processing units, and Intel saying it would join Elon Musk's Terafab AI initiative.

Companies supplying general-purpose CPUs and datacenter accelerators benefit when emerging AI workloads, including agentic systems, create diverse compute profiles that mix large-scale training, inference, and orchestrated multi-component pipelines. Observed patterns in similar market rallies show investor attention tends to cluster on firms with visible revenue growth in data center segments and on those that can point to foundry, partner, or customer milestones.

Industry context: Strong sequential and year-over-year data center growth at incumbent chip firms often re-focus procurement debates around total cost of ownership, software ecosystem support, and integration of CPUs with accelerators. For practitioners: expanding commercial demand for EPYC and data-center GPUs affects capacity planning, benchmark priorities, and procurement timelines for AI infrastructure projects.

Signals to monitor include reported shipment trends for Instinct GPUs and EPYC CPUs, follow-up analyst revisions to earnings and price targets (Reuters was cited by Cryptobriefing), updates on Apple sourcing talks, and further statements or disclosed deals from Intel and Google about custom infrastructure processing units. Cryptobriefing has not provided an exhaustive list of counterparties or timeline details for the reported Apple discussions.