Origins (middle) and
Gordon Moore (right) along with
Andy Grove, in 1978 Intel was incorporated in
Mountain View, California, on July 18, 1968, by
Gordon E. Moore, a
chemist;
Robert Noyce, a physicist and co-inventor of the
integrated circuit; and
Arthur Rock, an investor and
venture capitalist. Moore and Noyce had left
Fairchild Semiconductor, where they were part of the "
traitorous eight" who founded it. There were originally 500,000 shares outstanding of which Noyce bought 245,000 shares, Moore 245,000 shares, and Rock 10,000 shares; all at $1 per share. Rock offered $2,500,000 of convertible debentures to a limited group of private investors (equivalent to $21 million in 2022), convertible at $5 per share. Two years later, Intel became a
public company via an
initial public offering (IPO), raising $6.8 million ($23.50 per share). Intel was one of the first companies—and the oldest—to be listed on the then-newly established
National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System (
NASDAQ). Intel's third employee was
Andy Grove, a
chemical engineer, who ran the company through much of the 1980s and the high-growth 1990s. In deciding on a name, Moore and Noyce quickly rejected "Moore Noyce", a near-homophone for "more noise" – an ill-suited name for an
electronics company, since
noise in electronics is usually undesirable and typically associated with bad
interference. Instead, they founded the company as NM Electronics on July 18, 1968, but by the end of the month had changed the name to Intel, which stood for Integrated Electronics. Since "Intel" was already trademarked by the hotel chain Intelco, it had to buy the rights for the name.
Early history At its founding, Intel was distinguished by its ability to make
logic circuits using
semiconductor devices. The founders' goal was the
semiconductor memory market, widely predicted to replace
magnetic-core memory. Its first product, a quick entry into the small, high-speed memory market in 1969, was the 3101
Schottky TTL bipolar 64-bit
static random-access memory (SRAM), which was nearly twice as fast as earlier Schottky diode implementations by Fairchild and the Electrotechnical Laboratory in
Tsukuba, Japan. In the same year, Intel also produced the 3301 Schottky bipolar 1024-bit
read-only memory (ROM) and the first commercial
metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET)
silicon gate SRAM chip, the 256-bit 1101. While the 1101 was a significant advance, its complex static
cell structure made it too slow and costly for
mainframe computer memories. The three-
transistor cell implemented in the first commercially available
dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), the
1103 released in 1970, solved these issues. The 1103 was the bestselling semiconductor memory chip in the world by 1972, as it replaced core memory in many applications. Intel's business grew during the 1970s as it expanded and improved its manufacturing processes and produced a wider range of products, still dominated by various memory devices. , designer of the
Intel 4004 Intel created the first commercially available microprocessor, the
Intel 4004, in 1971. Subsequently, Intel would create one of the first
microcomputers in 1973. Intel opened its first international manufacturing facility in 1972, in Malaysia, which would host multiple Intel operations, before opening assembly facilities and semiconductor plants in Singapore and Jerusalem, Israel, in the early 1980s, and manufacturing and development centers in China, India, and Costa Rica in the 1990s. By the early 1980s, its business was dominated by DRAM chips. However, increased competition from Japanese semiconductor manufacturers had, by 1983, dramatically reduced the profitability of this market. The growing success of the
IBM personal computer, based on an Intel microprocessor, was among factors that convinced Gordon Moore (CEO since 1975) to shift the company's focus to microprocessors and to change fundamental aspects of that business model. Moore's decision to sole-source Intel's model 80386 chip played into the company's continuing success. By the end of the 1980s, buoyed by its position as microprocessor supplier to IBM and IBM's competitors within the rapidly growing
personal computer market, Intel embarked on 10 years of unprecedented growth as the primary and most profitable hardware supplier to the PC industry, part of the winning "
Wintel" combination of Intel CPUs running
Microsoft Windows. This partnership would become instrumental in shaping the PC landscape, and solidified Intel's position on the market. Moore handed over his position as CEO to Andy Grove in 1987. By launching its Intel Inside
marketing campaign in 1991, Intel was able to associate
brand loyalty with consumer selection, so that by the end of the 1990s, its line of
Pentium processors had become a household name. During that period, it became the dominant supplier of PC microprocessors and was known for aggressive and
anti-competitive tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against
AMD, as well as a struggle with
Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry. In addition, the company is considered a key component of the rise of
Silicon Valley as a
high-tech center between the 1970s and 2000s.
Challenges to dominance (2000s) As Intel exited other markets, the company depended so much on the 80386 and its successors that a marketing employee said that "there's only one product, and Andy Grove's the product manager". After 2000, growth in demand for high-end microprocessors slowed. Competitors, most notably AMD (Intel's largest competitor in its primary x86 architecture market), garnered significant market share, initially in low-end and mid-range processors but ultimately across the product range. Intel's dominant position in its core market was greatly reduced, mostly due to the controversial
NetBurst microarchitecture. In the early 2000s, then-CEO,
Craig Barrett attempted to diversify the company's business beyond semiconductors, but few of these activities were ultimately successful.
Litigation Intel was embroiled in litigation for several years. U.S. law did not initially recognize
intellectual property rights related to microprocessor
topology (circuit layouts), until the
Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, a law sought by Intel and the
Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). During the late 1980s and 1990s (after this law was passed), Intel also sued companies that tried to develop competitor chips to the
80386 CPU. The lawsuits were noted to significantly burden the competition with legal bills, even if Intel lost the suits. This was seen as a win for Intel; an analyst called the move "risky" and "foolish", as Intel's current offerings at the time were considered to be behind those of AMD and IBM. In 2006, Intel unveiled its
Core microarchitecture; the product range was perceived as an exceptional leap in processor performance that at a stroke regained much of its leadership of the field. In 2008, Intel had another advance when it introduced the Penryn microarchitecture, fabricated using the 45 nm process node. Later that year, Intel released a processor with the
Nehalem architecture to positive reception. On June 27, 2006, the sale of Intel's
XScale assets was announced. Intel agreed to sell the XScale processor business to
Marvell Technology Group for an estimated $600 million and the assumption of unspecified liabilities. The move was intended to permit Intel to focus its resources on its core x86 and server businesses, and the
acquisition completed on November 9, 2006. In 2008, Intel spun off key assets of a solar startup business effort to form an independent company, SpectraWatt Incorporated. In 2011, SpectraWatt filed for bankruptcy. In February 2011, Intel began to build a new microprocessor manufacturing facility in
Chandler, Arizona, completed in 2013 at a cost of $5 billion. The building is now the 10 nm-certified Fab 42 and is connected to the other Fabs (12, 22, 32) on Ocotillo Campus via an enclosed bridge known as the Link. The company produces three-quarters of its products in the United States, although three-quarters of its revenue come from overseas. The
Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) was launched in October 2013. Intel is part of the coalition of public and private organizations that includes
Facebook,
Google, and Microsoft. Led by
Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI sought to make Internet access more affordable to broaden access in the developing world, where only 31% of people were online. Google would help lower Internet access prices to below the UN Broadband Commission's worldwide target of 5% of monthly income.
Attempts at entering the smartphone market In April 2011, Intel began a pilot project with
ZTE Corporation to produce smartphones using the
Intel Atom processor for China's domestic market. In December 2011, Intel announced that it reorganized several of its business units into a new mobile and communications group that would be responsible for the company's smartphone, tablet, and wireless efforts. Intel planned to introduce Medfield – a processor for tablets and smartphones – to the market in 2012, as an effort to compete with
Arm. As a 32-nanometer processor, Medfield is designed to be energy-efficient, one of Arm's chips' core features. Intel's partnership with
Google was announced at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) 2011 in San Francisco, California. In January 2012, Google announced
Android 2.3, supporting Intel's Atom microprocessor. In 2013, Intel's Kirk Skaugen said that Intel's exclusive focus on Microsoft platforms was a thing of the past and that it would now support all "tier-one operating systems" such as
Linux, Android,
iOS, and
ChromeOS. In 2014, Intel dismissed thousands of employees in response to "evolving market trends", and offered to subsidize manufacturers for the extra costs involved in using Intel chips in their tablets. In April 2016, Intel cancelled the
SoFIA platform and the Broxton Atom SoC for smartphones, effectively leaving the smartphone market.
Intel custom foundry Finding itself with excess fab capacity after the failure of the
Ultrabook to gain market traction and with PC sales declining, in 2013 Intel reached a
foundry agreement to produce chips for
Altera using a 14 nm process. General Manager of Intel's custom foundry division Sunit Rikhi indicated that Intel would pursue further such deals in the future. This was after poor sales of
Windows 8 hardware caused a major retrenchment for most of the major semiconductor manufacturers, except for
Qualcomm, which continued to see healthy purchases from its largest customer, Apple. As of July 2013, five companies were using Intel's fabs via the
Intel Custom Foundry division:
Achronix,
Tabula, Netronome,
Microsemi, and
Panasonicmost are
field-programmable gate array (FPGA) makers, but Netronome designs network processors. Only Achronix began shipping chips made by Intel using the 22 nm Tri-Gate process. Several other customers also exist but were not announced at the time. The foundry business was closed in 2018 due to Intel's issues with its manufacturing.
Security and manufacturing challenges (2016–2021) Intel continued its
Tick–tock model of a microarchitecture change followed by a die shrink until the 6th-generation Core family based on the
Skylake microarchitecture. This model was deprecated in 2016, with the release of the 7th-generation Core family (codenamed
Kaby Lake), ushering in the
process–architecture–optimization model. As Intel struggled to shrink its process node from
14 nm to
10 nm, processor development slowed and the company continued to use the Skylake microarchitecture until 2020, albeit with optimizations. The first microprocessor under that node,
Cannon Lake (marketed as 8th-generation Core), was released in small quantities in 2018. The company first delayed the mass production of its 10 nm products to 2017. They later delayed mass production to 2018, and then to 2019. Despite rumors of the process being cancelled, Intel finally introduced mass-produced 10 nm 10th-generation Intel Core mobile processors (codenamed "
Ice Lake") in September 2019. Intel later acknowledged that the strategy to shrink to 10 nm was too aggressive. While other foundries used up to four steps in 10 nm or 7 nm processes, the company's 10 nm process required up to five or six multi-pattern steps. In addition, Intel's 10 nm process is more dense than its counterpart processes from other foundries. Since Intel's microarchitecture and process node development were coupled, processor development stagnated. (besides
Intel Itanium and pre-2013
Intel Atom) had been subject to two security flaws dubbed
Meltdown and
Spectre. Renewed competition and other developments (2018–present) Due to Intel's issues with its 10 nm process node and the company's slow processor development, The company's main competitor, AMD, introduced the
Zen microarchitecture and a new
chiplet-based design to critical acclaim. Since its introduction, AMD, once unable to compete with Intel in the high-end CPU market, has undergone a resurgence, and Intel's dominance and market share have considerably decreased. In addition, Apple began to transition away from the x86 architecture and Intel processors to its own
Apple silicon for its Macintosh computers in 2020. The transition is expected to affect Intel minimally; however, it might prompt other PC manufacturers to reevaluate their reliance on Intel and the x86 architecture.
'IDM 2.0' strategy On March 23, 2021, chief executive officer (CEO) Pat Gelsinger laid out new plans for the company. These include a new strategy, called IDM 2.0, that includes investments in manufacturing facilities, use of both internal and external foundries, and a new foundry business called Intel Foundry Services (IFS), a standalone business unit. Unlike Intel Custom Foundry, IFS will offer a combination of packaging and process technology, and Intel's intellectual property portfolio including x86 cores. Other plans for the company include a partnership with
IBM and a new event for developers and engineers, called "Intel ON". The facility will cost at least $20 billion. The company expected the facility to begin producing chips by 2025. The same year Intel also chose
Magdeburg, Germany, as a site for two new chip mega factories for €17 billion (topping
Tesla's
Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg manufacturing plant investment in
Brandenburg, Germany). The start of the construction was initially planned for 2023, but this was postponed to late 2024, while the production start was scheduled for 2027. Including subcontractors, this was expected to create 10,000 new jobs. In August 2022, Intel signed a $30billion partnership with
Brookfield Asset Management to fund its then-recent factory expansions. As part of the deal, Intel would have a controlling stake by funding 51% of the cost of building new chip-making facilities in Chandler. Brookfield owns the remaining 49% stake, allowing the companies to split the revenue from those facilities. On January 31, 2023, as part of $3 billion in cost reductions, Intel announced pay cuts affecting employees above midlevel, ranging from 5% upwards. It also suspended bonuses and merit pay increases, reducing retirement plan matching. These cost reductions followed layoffs announced in the fall of 2022. In October 2023, Intel confirmed it would be the first commercial user of
high-NA extreme ultraviolet lithography tools, as part of its plan to regain process leadership from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (
TSMC). In December 2023, Intel unveiled Gaudi3, an
artificial intelligence (AI) chip for
generative AI software which launched in 2024 and competes with rival chips from
Nvidia and AMD. On June 4, 2024, Intel announced AI chips for data centers, the Xeon 6 processor, aiming for better performance and power efficiency compared to its predecessor. Intel's Gaudi 2 and Gaudi 3
AI accelerators were revealed to be more cost-effective than competitors' offerings. Additionally, Intel disclosed architecture details for its
Lunar Lake processors for AI PCs, which were released on September 24, 2024. In August 2024, after posting $1.6 billion in losses for Q2, Intel announced that it would cut 15,000 jobs to save $10 billion in 2025. In order to reach this goal, the company would offer early retirement and voluntary departure options. On November 1, 2024, it was announced that Intel would drop out of the
Dow Jones Industrial Average on November 8 prior to the stock market open, with Nvidia taking its place. In July 2025, Intel confirmed that it would let go of nearly 24,000 employees—about 15% of its workforce—by the end of 2025 as part of a wider restructuring plan. Intel also announced plans to scrap tens of billions of dollars of planned investments in new chip facilities in Europe. In September 2025, Nvidia invested $5 billion in Intel as part of a partnership to jointly develop data-center and personal-computing CPUs. The move will allow Nvidia to offer its powerful servers—the GB300 based on Blackwell GPUs—to customers using Intel's X86 architecture. In October 2025, Intel commenced talks to add rival AMD to its foundry customers. In April 2026, Intel announced a $14.2 billion agreement to repurchase the 49% equity interest in its facility in Ireland from Apollo Global Management, reclaiming full ownership of the site as part of a broader stabilization of its capital structure.
CEO replacement In December 2024, Intel's CEO
Pat Gelsinger was ousted amid ongoing struggles to revitalize the company, which declined in stock value during his tenure. Gelsinger's resignation, effective December 1, followed a board meeting where directors expressed dissatisfaction with the slow progress of his turnaround strategy. Despite efforts to enhance Intel's manufacturing capabilities and compete with rivals like AMD and Nvidia, the company faced mounting challenges, including a $16.6 billion loss and a 60% drop in share prices since Gelsinger's appointment in 2021. After his departure, Intel appointed David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus interim co-CEOs while searching for a permanent successor. Gelsinger's exit underscored the turmoil at Intel as it grappled with its identity crisis and sought to regain its semiconductor industry position. On March 13, 2025, Intel announced the appointment of
Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO, effective March 18, after four months of interim co-CEOs. Under Tan, Intel has engaged in a significant restructuring aimed at shrinking the company and refocusing on core businesses. In June, the company announced it would be closing its automotive chipmaking business and eliminating up to 20% of staff at its Hillsboro, Oregon foundry. In July, it was reported that Intel would be cutting 5,000 jobs across California, Oregon, Arizona, and Texas. It also spun off its artificial intelligence robotics and biometric company,
RealSense as a separate entity. Intel's headcount in Israel also fell below 9,000 for the first time since 2012. The company's plan has ultimately called for 24,000 layoffs, axing plans to build a mega-fab, and assembly and testing facilities in Germany and Poland, and consolidating its assembly and test operations in Costa Rica into its Vietnam sites. On August 7, 2025,
President Trump called for Tan's removal as CEO due to his China connections. Tan was CEO of
Cadence Design Systems when it unlawfully exported chips to China between 2015 and 2021, The attention caused Intel shares to drop more than 3% during intra-day trading. In a letter to Intel employees, Tan said that he has "always operated within the highest legal and ethical standards". On August 11, 2025, Tan met with President Trump and US Secretary of Commerce
Howard Lutnick and US Secretary of the Treasury
Scott Bessent at the White House. Following the meeting, President Trump wrote in a
Truth Social post that "the meeting was interesting" and Tan's "success and rise is an amazing story". The investment was structured as a passive ownership with no board representation or governance rights, and included a five-year warrant to purchase up to an additional 5% stake if Intel's ownership of its foundry business falls below 51%. The U.S. government price of $20.47 per share was a discount to the $23 per share
Softbank paid the prior week. Despite this boost resulting in a positive outlook in the last quarter of 2025, Intel shares dove more than 10% on 22 January 2026.
Competition from AMD in the server market In 2024 and 2025, AMD made significant advances in the server CPU market, narrowing the gap with Intel. While some reports briefly indicated a near-equal market split, further investigation revealed that these initial figures were influenced by manipulated benchmark data and were corrected shortly thereafter. As of the third quarter of 2025, Intel retained a majority share of the server CPU market at 63.3%, with AMD at 36.5%. While Intel remains the dominant player, it has seen its market share slip from over 90% in 2020. ==Products and markets==