Nvidia is investing $5 billion in Intel via a common stock purchase at $23.28 per share, which translates to about a 4 percent stake. The companies plan to collaborate across multiple projects, developing custom data center and PC products to accelerate applications and workloads across the hyperscale, enterprise and consumer markets. Nvidia’s NVLink will be used to connect the architectures, integrating Nvidia’s GPUs with Intel’s CPU technologies. For data centers, Intel will customize x86 CPUs that Nvidia can integrate into its AI platforms. Intel also plans to build x86 SOCs that integrate Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets for PCs.

The alliance pairs the world’s most valuable company, Nvidia, “which has been a darling of the artificial intelligence boom, with a chipmaker that has almost completely fallen out of the AI conversation,” writes The Wall Street Journal.

Intel also struggled to keep up with the explosion in mobile devices. The New York Times described Nvidia’s investment as “giving a rival a lifeline.“

CNBC reports that the collaboration “comes after the two companies held discussions for nearly a year.” Participating in a webcast with Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang to announce the news, Intel President and CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the two “have known each other for 30 years.“

“We appreciate the confidence Jensen and the Nvidia team have placed in us with their investment,” Tan said in a press release.

In August, at the direction of the Trump administration, the U.S. government acquired a 10 percent stake in Intel to help the company through a financial slump.

Founded in 1968 in Mountain View, California, Intel played a major role in the PC boom with its x86 chips. In 2021 it expanded its manufacturing to include ARM and RISC-V architectures. As one of a handful of American companies that both designs and manufactures chips, its ongoing viability is considered a matter of national security. Nvidia, also based in Mountain View, custom designs its flagship architectures but has its chips manufactured by Taiwan’s TSMC.

“The deal will help Nvidia diversify amid rising competition from Broadcom, Amazon and others,” writes NYT, noting “many customers have built data center capabilities around Intel’s software and processors, known as CPUs.”

Huang estimates the entre to Intel’s market could be worth as much as $50 billion, though he says there are no plans to manufacture Nvidia chips at Intel foundries. NYT reports Huang “said the Trump administration wasn’t involved in the deal.”

Related:
Jensen Huang Wants You to Know He’s Getting a Lot Out of the ‘Fantastic’ Nvidia-Intel Deal, Wired, 9/18/25
Nvidia and Intel’s $5 Billion Deal Is Apparently About Eating AMD’s Lunch, The Verge, 9/18/25
Intel’s Biggest Problem Isn’t Going Away with Nvidia’s $5 Billion Stake, Yahoo Finance, 9/19/25
Intel Says Arc GPUs Will Live on After Nvidia Deal, The Verge, 9/18/25
Intel’s Nvidia Deal Expected to Be a Mixed Blessing for Asian Chipmakers, Reuters, 9/19/25