This special report focuses on the Q2 2026 earnings season for US stocks.

The company has been burning through cash for several years.

Intel has released its earnings report, boosted by chip purchasing demand from AI clients. Its second-quarter revenue achieved its largest increase in 15 years, driving the company's stock price up 6% in pre-market trading.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) saw revenue from its Data Center and AI hardware segment surge 59%, reaching $6.3 billion. Central Processing Units (CPUs) have long been a core strength for Intel. Currently, the AI industry has a strong demand for CPUs, as applications like AI agents require continuous, long-duration task execution that heavily relies on CPU performance. These computing tasks demand high memory bandwidth and system scheduling capabilities, an area where CPUs outperform Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which are designed for massive floating-point operations.

Recent earnings reports from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) also indicate that, besides GPUs, their CPU sales are rising concurrently.

Intel's foundry business also saw positive developments: this quarter's revenue rose 31% to $5.8 billion, while its operating loss narrowed by nearly 18 percentage points compared to the same period last year. The U.S. government has injected capital into Intel, partly because wafer foundry services hold critical national strategic value, especially as the world's leading advanced chip foundries are primarily concentrated in Taiwan.

Another significant positive: Intel generated approximately $4.5 billion in free cash flow this quarter. For many years, Intel had been consistently burning cash, including in the first quarter of this year.

Overall, the company's Q2 revenue increased 25% year-over-year. Additionally, Intel provided guidance, forecasting a revenue increase of between 15% and 23% for the current quarter.

Editor: Guo Mingyu