On the company’s Q3 2025 earnings call today, where Intel saw its first profit in nearly two years, largely due to these lifelines, CEO Lip-Botan and CFO David Zinzer said the company still doesn’t have enough chips. It’s currently seeing a shortage that’s expected to peak in the first quarter of next year — in the meantime, leaders say they’re going to prioritize AI server chips over some consumer processors as it relates to supply and demand.
“We expect CCG (Intel’s consumer chips) to be down slightly and DCAI (Intel’s server chips) to be up strongly as we prioritize server throughput over entry-level client parts,” Intel says. Tan revealed today that Intel will also release new AI GPUs every year, shaking up its traditional landscape to address the huge demand for AI servers after NVIDIA and AMD. It’s unclear what this might mean for those hoping for more Intel gaming GPUs.
While all eyes are on Intel’s hot new Panther Lake and its 18A process to show the world it can still make and house extremely powerful consumer PC chips, the company reiterated that there’s another possible reason for launching one Panther Lake this year and slowly rolling out the others in 2026: Zinsner indicated today that Panther Lake is a “pretty will be expensive” instead of lake chips “for at least the first half of the year.”
Although Intel has repeatedly pushed back against the idea that its 18A process has poor production, the company admitted to investors and analysts today that it’s not ready for a huge financial breakthrough either: production is “sufficient to address supply but where we need to drive reasonable levels of margin,” suggesting it could be 2026, or even 2027.
For now, Intel will work with customers to “adjust pricing and mix, including adjusting our supply and increasing their demand, to maximize our available output and their demand.” Tan reiterated today that it won’t invest in more capacity unless there is “external demand,” and Zinzer says that capacity investment next year “significantly changes expectations.” won’t”.
Intel says the 18A will be a “long-term node” that will power “at least the next three generations of client and server products.” If you were hoping for a return to the “tick tock” days where Intel would alternate between shrinking its chips and releasing a new architecture each generation, it’s not happening here.
But that doesn’t mean Intel will cancel its next node, the Intel 14a, as it has warned. Tan suggested today that consumers have stepped up to save the 14a and Intel, that the company is “happy and more confident” in it, and Zinzer says it’s not only “a good start”, but better than the 18A at this point “in terms of performance and output”.
