Nvidia's $35.6 billion investment in Intel: A "marriage of giants" with different agendas
Text | Qiu Xiaofen
Editor | Su Jianxun
On September 18th, NVIDIA announced a major piece of news on its official website: NVIDIA will invest $5 billion (equivalent to 35.6 billion RMB) in Intel. This investment will be realized by purchasing Intel stocks at a price of $23.28 per share.
After the news was announced, at 1 a.m. Beijing time on September 19th, Jensen Huang, the founder of NVIDIA, and Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel, held an online press conference.
At the press conference, Jensen Huang rarely changed his leather jacket and put on a neat suit. Pat Gelsinger also expressed his gratitude for this cooperation in English with a Chinese accent - "I've known Jensen Huang for over 30 years... I pay tribute to Jensen Huang and thank NVIDIA for its support, trust, and confidence."
△ Screenshot of the press conference
"Targeting a market with an annual scale of $50 billion"
In addition to the financial cooperation, the two "In" companies will penetrate each other's territories in the future -
In NVIDIA's territory, taking the NVLink 72 system released by NVIDIA in March last year as an example, this system not only includes 72 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs but also requires 36 Vera CPUs specially customized by NVIDIA based on the Arm architecture. Since Intel's CPUs are connected via PCIe and do not support NVLink, they have always lacked competitiveness in the data center market.
In the future, NVIDIA plans to introduce NVLink into the Intel system to help Intel expand its data center market - the current scale of the data center CPU market has reached $30 billion.
In Intel's territory, personal computers generally adopt an integrated design of CPU and GPU. In addition, due to various reasons such as form factor design, cost control, and battery life optimization in the past, the penetration of high - performance GPUs led by NVIDIA in personal computers has been seriously insufficient.
In the future, Intel plans to integrate NVIDIA's GPUs into X86 processors through Chiplets to help NVIDIA develop the niche category of integrated graphics laptops - the annual shipment of laptops reaches 150 million units, and the market scale exceeds $20 billion.
Therefore, from a commercial perspective, this cooperation obviously helps these two chip giants expand new market spaces for each other.
Jensen Huang said at the press conference that the technical teams of the two companies have been discussing solutions and designing architectures for nearly a year.
Pat Gelsinger, who has been in office for less than half a year, said bluntly that he was busy facilitating this cooperation on his first day in office. Even to cooperate smoothly with NVIDIA, Intel has "stepped up the pace" across the company to create a corporate culture that matches NVIDIA's.
"We are targeting a market with an annual scale of nearly $50 billion," Jensen Huang said bluntly.
However, after this cooperation, the outside world generally worries whether it will affect the global chip landscape in the future. The outside world's doubts focus on: Will NVIDIA shift its chip production from TSMC to Intel in the future? Will NVIDIA abandon the Arm architecture camp because of Intel?
Jensen Huang answered these questions one by one.
He said that the next - stage chip production will continue to be entrusted to TSMC, but they are not opposed to Intel's advanced process manufacturing and will conduct qualification certification and then make further evaluations.
In addition, he also asserted that after cooperating with Intel, all CPU products developed based on the Arm architecture (including Vera, Grace, Thor, N1) will not be affected. The cooperation between the two sides is a parallel expansion rather than a replacement of the existing Arm architecture.
△ Before the press conference, Pat Gelsinger posted a group photo with Jensen Huang on social platform X
Potential political benefits
Beyond the interests, this cooperation may inevitably take on a political color.
Missing opportunities is a high - level summary of Intel's business career - it missed the opportunity in mobile chips, the chance to snuff out the rise of the Arm architecture, the opportunity to layout GPUs, and the chance to invest in OpenAI in the AI era...
In recent years, Intel has been in a difficult situation. In its comfort - zone CPU market, Intel has been under direct attack from AMD for years, and the latter overtook Intel with its Zen architecture and Chiplet technology. In the new strategic direction of chip foundry, Intel's advanced process technology lags behind TSMC by two generations, facing huge losses and mass - production difficulties.
Therefore, the financial and product support from NVIDIA is a life - saving elixir for Intel. After being hit by a series of negative news such as global layoffs, CEO changes, the delay of the 18A process mass - production, and huge losses in the second quarter of 2025, Intel has emerged from the long - standing shadow.
As soon as the news came out, Intel's stock price soared by 30% in pre - market trading, stopped falling, and reached its highest point in nearly a year.
For NVIDIA, getting closer to Intel may also have ulterior motives - although Intel has suffered successive setbacks in the business world, it has received much attention from the US government in recent years.
On the one hand, Intel's bet on the IDM model means it has to make large - scale capital investments.
In recent years, Intel has built chip factories in states such as Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon. This has not only directly created a large number of jobs in the chip manufacturing and construction industries, promoted the local economy, but also aggregated the upstream and downstream industrial chains. This also aligns with the US government's advocacy of the reshoring and revival of manufacturing.
On the other hand, against the backdrop of de - globalization, as the only IDM enterprise in the US with both advanced chip design and manufacturing capabilities, Intel is a pawn for the US to get rid of overseas supply chains and "balance" the global semiconductor industry landscape.
The US government is supporting Intel with real money. Not long ago, the US government acquired a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion, becoming its largest shareholder.
Counting a series of earlier support measures (such as chip bill grants, defense grants, etc.), the US government's financial support for Intel has exceeded $10 billion.
In this context, NVIDIA's investment is undoubtedly a move with the trend. You know, NVIDIA is now in an awkward "sandwiched" situation.
Under the increasingly strict chip control policies, to retain the huge Chinese market, NVIDIA has offered to hand over 15% of the profits from its special - supply chips in exchange for an export license. In addition, Jensen Huang has also sought negotiation space from all parties through repeated negotiations with US senior officials and high - profile visits to China.
All this shows that NVIDIA, struggling to survive in the gap, is trying hard to find a balance between commercial interests and various political pressures.
At the press conference, when asked by a reporter whether this cooperation was promoted by the US government, Jensen Huang's answer was a bit ambiguous - he said that the US government was not involved at all, "but they will probably express their support."
After the news was announced, he also quickly reported to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (one of the key members of the Trump administration), "He was very excited about it."
Of course, the premise of this cooperation is that this investment is not difficult for NVIDIA.
The financial report shows that NVIDIA's cash and cash equivalents at the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2026 reached $56.79 billion, indicating strong financial strength. Jensen Huang also said at the press conference that he firmly believes that this investment "will bring very substantial and valuable returns in the future."
It seems that the historic "handshake" between NVIDIA and Intel is a "giant marriage" with different agendas.
In this cooperation, in addition to obvious commercial interests, Intel has got the ticket to catch up with the AI era, and NVIDIA has also gained long - term political benefits.
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