According to analysis from the well-known Wall Street investment firm Wedbush, American consumer electronics giant Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) is expanding its U.S. supply chain by establishing a partnership with the established American chip manufacturing leader Intel Corporation (INTC.US). This move aims to mitigate pressures related to memory chip costs and supply shortages. The firm views this purely domestic U.S. foundry collaboration model as a win-win for both companies.

Apple secures supply chain security, backup access to advanced chip production capacity, and a strategic buffer against its reliance on TSMC's production lines.

Intel gains a credibility endorsement for its foundry business from a top-tier client like Apple, along with the benefits of U.S. semiconductor reshoring policies. For Intel, whose stock price has surged over 200% this year, the long-term bull thesis is becoming increasingly robust, despite the company being labeled an "AI castoff" by some analysts.

The explosive demand for CPUs in the AI inference era, combined with the Trump administration's semiconductor reshoring policies and robust chip demand bringing in major client orders from companies like Apple and NVIDIA, has set Intel on a new AI super-cycle trajectory driven by both "chip foundry services" and "data center CPUs."

The market is re-rating Intel from a "legacy IDM lagging behind TSMC" to "America's national-level advanced manufacturing and AI compute power backbone." More precisely, this strong bull case is triggered by a capital markets re-rating driven by policy backing, top-tier client orders, exploding AI server CPU demand, and a premium for U.S. domestic manufacturing.

At the time of writing, Intel stock surged over 10% in early U.S. trading to $133, with its market capitalization exceeding $670 billion. Former President Trump's announcement that Apple will design and manufacture chips in the U.S. with Intel comes against the backdrop of Apple's heavy reliance on TSMC, whose advanced production lines are being squeezed by demand from AI chips for NVIDIA and AMD.

Wedbush analysts believe this will help Apple diversify its manufacturing footprint during the AI-driven three-to-four-year device upgrade cycle and enhance supply chain bargaining power and domestic manufacturing flexibility as rising DRAM and NAND memory prices begin to impact profit margins.

However, it's important to note that "pure U.S. domestic foundry" should be understood more as a strategic supplement rather than a full-scale replacement. Apple will still rely on TSMC's most advanced process nodes in the short term, and Intel must prove its yield, cost, power efficiency, and delivery capabilities with its 18A and subsequent nodes.

The Wall Street firm Melius Research recently raised its price target for Intel from $100 to $150, highlighting how the "data center CPU demand frenzy + the improving profit outlook for the advanced 18A chip process" are jointly fueling and advancing Intel's super-bull narrative.

Star analyst Ben Reitzes from Melius Research stated that the core logic is not simply betting on a PC recovery, but rather re-rating Intel as the primary beneficiary of CPUs in the era of AI inference and agent computing, coupled with the narrative of challenging TSMC's advanced process/foundry dominance.

From TSMC Dependence to Reuniting with Intel: Apple Bets on U.S. Fabs to Hedge Against AI Chip and Memory Cost Pressures

In 2020, Apple announced the Mac's transition to its own Apple Silicon, and in 2023, the last Intel-based Mac Pro was discontinued, essentially completing a "public breakup" with Intel CPUs.

However, the recent news of renewed collaboration does not involve Apple purchasing Intel x86 architecture CPUs or other chips again. Instead, it suggests that Intel's foundry business (Intel Foundry) may manufacture some of Apple's custom-designed chips.

It is reported that on Thursday, former U.S. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social stating that Apple has agreed to partner with Intel to design and manufacture its chips in the United States. Intel stock surged approximately 9% in pre-market trading following this post.

The post stated: "America clearly needs to bring semiconductor manufacturing back home now. We design everything, we (also) need to manufacture it in America now! So I decided to help Intel, because we need to design and make our chips in America. First, we brought in NVIDIA, they agreed to work with Intel to make their first-tier chips. Second, Musk agreed to build his TerraFab, the world's largest chip factory, co-designed with Intel's tech team. Finally, Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and manufacture its chips in America."

This follows media reports that Apple was considering using U.S.-based fabs from Intel and Samsung Electronics to produce certain critical processor components for its devices.

Analysts led by Dan Ives at Wedbush stated that this collaboration would help Apple with chip design, development, and complete foundry manufacturing within the U.S., focusing more on reducing heavy reliance on Asian manufacturing facilities amid increasingly frequent geopolitical conflicts and supply chain crises.

The analysts noted that after Apple's transition from Intel chips to its own Apple Silicon, the company is now set to engage in a significant portion of foundry business with Intel in the coming years. As Apple enters this AI-driven three-to-four-year device refresh cycle, U.S. chip manufacturing for Apple represents a massive opportunity for Intel.

"This is the right time for this deal, as Apple seeks to diversify its manufacturing map; AI chip developers are driving explosive growth in demand for advanced process chips, while Apple is also reducing its heavy reliance on its primary overseas supplier, TSMC," Ives and his team stated.

Furthermore, analysts indicated that Apple has already begun to see supply chain pressures, with memory prices now starting to impact the company's overall profit margins. Previous media reports suggested Apple was planning to raise product prices to offset soaring memory and storage chip costs.

According to media reports, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated in an internal memo on Thursday that "the situation has become unsustainable" and that "price increases for Apple devices are inevitable."

"While not touching on price increases or revealing exactly where these increases will appear in its hardware portfolio, we believe this will come with the September launch of the new iPhone 18 series and the new foldable iPhone," Ives and his team stated.

The Wedbush analysts, led by Dan Ives, added, "While the company has ample capacity to invest in memory chip supply to support AI features in its devices through DRAM and NAND, we believe that, given the company's increasing focus on the premium consumer segment, its foundry cooperation with Intel now puts Apple in a favorable position to raise prices without sacrificing hardware performance, increasing chip capacity, or risking greater customer churn."

Wedbush analysts pointed out that while Apple has diversified its supply chain to other parts of the world, including Vietnam, India, and the U.S., this represents a significant strategic move by Apple to continue pushing supply chain diversification to alleviate pressures within its manufacturing map.

"The company has announced it will invest approximately $600 billion in U.S. manufacturing, but we are now seeing a significant reconfiguration of semiconductor manufacturing capacity from consumer electronics towards AI compute infrastructure, and Apple is now in the process of locking in domestic chip capacity to prepare for a multi-year, AI-technology-driven hardware refresh cycle," Ives and his team stated.

AI Inference Explodes CPU Demand + Foundry Gains Momentum: Intel's Bullish Narrative Grows Stronger

Intel is transitioning from a past PC cyclical stock to a compound AI compute infrastructure asset comprising a U.S. domestic advanced manufacturing platform, an AI server CPU foundation, and strategic client foundry options.

If the Apple collaboration materializes, it would provide a top-tier client endorsement for Intel Foundry. NVIDIA's latest Vera Rubin AI compute infrastructure cluster demonstrates that in the era of AI inference, agents, and GPU clusters, the CPU remains the undisputed critical controller for task orchestration, memory access, I/O scheduling, and security isolation.

What is truly prompting the market to re-evaluate Intel is not just the Apple order itself, but Intel rediscovering two indispensable positions within AI infrastructure: first, advanced foundry and packaging; second, the host CPU, scheduler CPU, and data movement CPU within GPU clusters.

Intel's Q1 2026 revenue was $13.6 billion, up 7% year-over-year, with the Data Center and AI Group revenue at $5.1 billion, up 22%, and Intel Foundry revenue at $5.4 billion, up 16%. The company also stated that the shift of AI from foundational models to inference and agents will significantly increase demand for CPUs, wafers, and advanced packaging.

More critically, Intel Xeon 6 will be extensively used as the host CPU in NVIDIA's DGX Rubin NVL72 rack-scale systems. NVIDIA had previously announced it would invest $5 billion in Intel, with both companies co-developing AI infrastructure and PC products. The investment and cooperation agreement also includes Intel designing custom data center CPUs for NVIDIA that can be packaged with GPUs.

Currently, the most optimistic Wall Street price target for Intel comes from Melius Research analyst Benjamin Reitzes, who significantly raised his target from $100 to $150 while maintaining a "Buy" rating. Reitzes' core bullish logic is that the frenzy in AI compute infrastructure construction is exponentially increasing server CPU demand, restoring value to Intel's CPU position in AI data centers.

Simultaneously, its U.S. domestic chip brand and manufacturing assets, potential collaborations with NVIDIA/Apple, the comprehensive turnaround of its foundry business under Lip-Bu Tan's leadership, and U.S. government semiconductor reshoring policies are causing the market to re-rate Intel from a traditional CPU company to a uniquely strategic and scarce U.S. equity pricing system comprising "AI Data Center CPU + U.S. Domestic Advanced Foundry + Domestic Advanced Packaging."