The deal marks a significant lifeline for Intel and signals a new era of collaboration between two of America's most powerful chipmakers.
Nvidia has completed its $5 billion equity investment in Intel, concluding a landmark transaction first announced in September that represents one of the most significant partnerships in semiconductor industry history.
Intel confirmed the purchase of 214.7 million shares in a securities filing, concluding a deal first announced in September. Nvidia had locked in a purchase price of $23.28 per share for Intel when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan struck a deal in September.
The transaction, which closed on December 26 according to regulatory filings, gives Nvidia approximately a 4.4% ownership stake in one of America's most storied chipmakers—and has already proven financially lucrative. Nvidia's $5 billion Intel stock purchase is already worth $7.58 billion, with Intel shares closing Monday at $36.68, representing a 56% appreciation above the deal price.
FTC Greenlight Paves the Way
The deal had been under scrutiny by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which was examining whether Nvidia's potential 4 percent ownership stake could run afoul of antitrust laws. However, the FTC gave the deal a greenlight on Dec. 18.
The announcement comes days after the Federal Trade Commission announced that regulators had cleared the way for the planned investment, viewed as a major endorsement of Intel by the world's most valuable company.
A Partnership Beyond Capital
The investment represents far more than a financial transaction. The two companies are also launching a partnership centered around product development, with plans to collaborate on multiple generations of customized data center and personal computing products.
Central to this collaboration is Nvidia's NVLink technology. The two companies will work on connecting their chips via the incredibly fast NVLink, which reaches 1.8 TB/s of bandwidth—about 14x the bandwidth of a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot.
"AI is powering a new industrial revolution and reinventing every layer of the computing stack — from silicon to systems to software," said Jensen Huang, Nvidia's founder and CEO, when the deal was announced. "This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA's AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel's CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem — a fusion of two world-class platforms."
"Intel's x86 architecture has been foundational to modern computing for decades — and we are innovating across our portfolio to enable the workloads of the future," said Lip-Bu Tan, Intel's CEO.
Technical Collaboration Details
For data centers, Intel will build NVIDIA-custom x86 CPUs that NVIDIA will integrate into its AI infrastructure platforms and offer to the market. For personal computing, Intel will build and offer to the market x86 system-on-chips (SOCs) that integrate NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets.
These new x86 RTX chips will power PCs that contain integrated CPUs and GPUs.
A Lifeline for Intel's Recovery
The investment arrives at a critical juncture for Intel. The company reported an $18.8 billion annual loss in 2024, marking its first one since 1986, after years of execution missteps, intense competition, and heavy capital spending on new manufacturing plants.
While Intel's shares have since rebounded sharply, rising roughly 80% this year, the Nvidia transaction marks a direct cash infusion at a time when Intel has been balancing recovery with the enormous costs of rebuilding its manufacturing base.
The deal follows significant government support, with the US government acquiring a 10% stake in Intel in August for nearly $9 billion.
The partnership comes as the Trump administration continues focusing on reinforcing U.S. leadership in advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Nvidia's capital infusion into Intel — one of the few American companies capable of operating at advanced manufacturing scale — seems aligned with national priorities around semiconductor production.
Beyond capital, the deal tightly binds Nvidia's AI computing stack with Intel's x86 CPU ecosystem, potentially reshaping the competitive landscape of the semiconductor industry for years to come.
Industry analysts note that while no release timeline has been announced for products emerging from this collaboration, the partnership could mark a significant shift in how the two companies compete (and cooperate) in the rapidly evolving AI chip market.
