Intel’s fourth-quarter financial results reflected a growing demand for its chips for AI products and data centersoffset by persistent supply constraints that continue to pressure its consumer segment. The semiconductor giant reported $13.7 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025, down 4% year-over-year but near the upper end of its forecast. Annual revenue decreased slightly, from $53.1 billion to $52.9 billion.
The mixed results highlight a Fundamental tension in Intel’s business: The company sells almost all the chips it produces, but still cannot meet demand. Supply shortages have forced executives to prioritize high-margin segments (servers for AI) while rationing production of consumer processors.
Intel: more chips for AI, less for personal computing
Intel’s data center and artificial intelligence division had a notable performance, posting quarterly revenue growth of 9% and annual growth of 5%. These gains came thanks to increased demand for new lines of Xeon and AI accelerators optimized for massively parallel workloads from cloud providers and enterprise customers.
By contrast, Intel’s client computing group—responsible for Core processors, Arc graphics cards, and other personal computing products—experienced a decrease in income 7% in the quarter and 3% in the year, confirming that competitors such as AMD threaten Intel’s leadership in PCs.
The imbalance has led management to reorient manufacturing priorities towards the enterprise segmentwhich has generated higher margins. Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said Intel is focusing its internal wafer supply on data center products, while outsourcing more of its consumer chip production to outside foundries like TSMC.
This prioritization could lead to potential shortages or pricing pressure on Intel’s next line of consumer products, including the new Core Ultra Series 3 processors, codenamed Panther Lake. Unlike their predecessors, which relied heavily on TSMC manufacturing, these chips are primarily produced in Intel factories in the United States.
Zinsner acknowledged that Intel cannot completely abandon the customer market, but the company is reorienting most of its production towards products for data centers. This decision confirms where demand is strongest and most profitable at a time when every usable wafer counts and follows the strategy of NVIDIA itself and memory manufacturers like Micron.
The big problem of feeding the insatiable AI models and the unbridled battle for global control of these technologies is causing a reversal of the PC market.
