Finally some good vibes from Intel as stock jumps 15% on new CEO hire and Arizona fab celebrates ‘Eagle has landed’ moment for its 18A node

Intel’s numerous woes in the last, well, decade or so are thoroughly documented. So, it’s nice to be able to report some good vibes. Its share price leapt nearly 15% yesterday, primarily in response to the appointment of new CEO Lip-Bu Tan.

Meanwhile, an engineering manager at Intel posted some celebratory images from the company’s Arizona fab marking an “Eagle has landed” moment for the crucial 18A node, an indication the new node might already be in mass production.

I as tap these words out, Intel’s share price sits at $23.88, over 20% higher than the circa $19.50 it was trading at on Tuesday. That’s still a long way of the $65-plus level it hit in April 2021 and also well below the $42 it hit way back in 2000.

Long story short, Intel has a long way to go yet if we can say it’s turned any sort of corner. Indeed, by the estimates of most financial experts, Intel’s break up value, or how much money you’d net by breaking the company up and selling all its assets to the highest bidder still comfortably exceeds its current market cap, or its current overall valuation based on its share price.

Whenever a break up value exceeds market cap, it’s an indication that the markets are pessimistic about the company’s prospects. So, in net terms, that remains the case today, even after a double-digit bump in the stock price. But up is up, and Intel is definitely on the up this week.

But what of that 18A moment? Inevitably, the Linkedin post in question seems to have already been taken down. But not before it was captured by several observers.

In it, Intel engineering manager Pankaj Marria posted an image of a group of engineers in front of an ‘Eagle has landed poster’ and commented, “proud to be part of the Eagle Team, leading the way in bringing Intel 18A technology to life! Our team was at the forefront of running the initial lots right here in Arizona, marking a key step in advancing cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing.”

He also added, “the Eagle has landed, and this is just the beginning! Developed and Made in America the World’s smallest Node.”

Several observers are taking Marria’s comment of “running the initial lots” to mean that mass production had started. Frankly, it’s hard to know if that’s a reasonable interpretation of the Linkedin post. But at the very least, there seems to be clear positivity inside Intel about the health of 18A. And that is a very, very good thing for not only Intel itself, but the chip industry as a whole.

Currently, TSMC dominates the customer chip manufacturing market in terms of cutting-edge silicon. That’s made access to TSMC’s fabs critical, it’s pushed up prices, and arguably lead to the current situation where it’s hard to find a decent graphics card to buy, never mind how much you’ll have to pay for it.

Intel is planning to take on TSMC directly with its 18A node, offering it to everyone from Nvidia to AMD as an alternative manufacturing solution. If 18A succeeds, it will relieve much of that pressure, industry wide, and might (just might!) help return the GPU market to something approaching normality.

Intel is also planning on using 18A for its next-gen Panther Lake mobile and Nova Lake desktop CPUs. No doubt if 18A really is killer, it could be used for a future Intel GPU architecture, such as Celestial or Druid.

Long story short, 18A is crucial. Go, 18A, go! Please…