Intel's shares plunged 12% on Friday after the company struggled to meet strong AI demand for data-center chips due to supply constraints, disappointing investors betting on its turnaround. Francis Maguire reports.

First-quarter sales will be down about 4% from last year, the company said, even though there is strong demand from data centers for Intel microprocessors to help manage artificial intelligence tasks.

Intel’s stock has more than doubled over the last year with investments from the Trump administration, SoftBank and Nvidia.

The Intel turnaround story is going to take longer than expected to play out, analysts say. Intel stock dropped Friday after its Q4 report.

Rising demand for Intel’s traditional computing chips, called CPUs (central processing units), from data centers amid the rise of agentic AI and the launch of Intel’s Panther Lake chips for AI PCs prompted multiple investing firms including HSBC and KeyBanc to raise their ratings on Intel stock in the last few weeks.

Intel forecast revenue of $11.7 billion to $12.7 billion for the current quarter. The midpoint of that range is below the consensus call of $12.6 bil

Intel stock gained again on Wednesday ahead of the chip company’s earnings report. Analysts are becoming gradually more enthusiastic about its prospects. Intel shares were up 11.7% at $54.25 for the session,