Added to the Intel post of January 23, 2026.
From The WSJ article linked below in the updates:
When President Trump promised Intel nearly $9 billion and gave it his vote of confidence as an America-first tech company, it looked like the start of a new era. Investors assumed new orders would flow to the troubled chip maker and bid up the stock 120% in just five months.
And customer demand for Intel’s products did explode—but Intel wasn’t ready for it. After months of cutting capacity on its older production lines, the company was unprepared for a surge of orders for processors to put in AI data centers. Intel’s stock has crashed 17%, wiping out more than $46 billion in market value, since executives revealed the flub on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday.
“The stock went vertical on vibes and tweets,” said Stacy Rasgon, a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein. “In theory, they should be in place to capitalize on this demand, but they’re not. What a shame.”
It turns out it takes more than a vote of confidence from the White House and good vibes to fix Intel’s business.
For a time, the Trump administration’s deal to convert federal grants to Intel into a U.S. stake in the company succeeded in changing the narrative around it, as SoftBank injected an additional $2 billion and Nvidia entered into an agreement to design custom chips.
But investors who tuned into the earnings call hoping to see evidence that Intel was making forward progress in its money-hemorrhaging foundry business, or otherwise getting a boost from the artificial-intelligence boom buoying the entire tech sector, instead got a reminder of the deep operational problems that left the once-great chip maker in need of a rescue in the first place.
Intel still has no customer lined up for its next-generation chip-fabrication technology, known as 14A. In a chicken-or-egg dilemma, it is holding off on investing in new facilities until it has a customer, pushing back its timeline as its top competitor in manufacturing, TSMC, pours capital into new U.S. chip-fabrication plants, or fabs.
And what should have been an easy win for the company—surging demand from AI data centers for its central processing units, or CPUs—was squandered owing to a lack of available supply.
Updates
January 24, 2026: The WSJ -- link here -- how intel came crashing back to earth --
January 24, 2026: the stock is okay -- Jim Cramer -- link here --
January 24, 2026: link here.
