NVIDIA and Intel have announced a significant investment and collaboration initiative， with NVIDIA committing $5 billion to become a key shareholder in Intel. This partnership aims to jointly develop AI and x86 chips， a move that has sent ripples throughout the industry， considering the companies’ complex history.
For decades， NVIDIA and Intel have oscillated between periods of collaboration and intense competition. It is noteworthy that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang himself had previously stated that Intel had been attempting to “eliminate” NVIDIA for the past 33 years. This makes the current investment and joint development plan even more striking.
Under the agreement， NVIDIA will leverage Intel’s manufacturing capabilities by customizing Intel CPUs for its own AI platforms， with Intel serving as the supplier. Conversely， Intel will integrate NVIDIA’s GPUs into its processors， resulting in SoC (System on a Chip) products featuring NVIDIA’s RTX GPUs. In this arrangement， NVIDIA will act as a supplier， while Intel will handle the integration and sales of these new chips.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger addressed this collaboration during the Q3 earnings call， emphasizing its paramount importance. He described NVIDIA as a “great company” and highlighted his personal friendship with Jensen Huang， which spans over three decades.
Gelsinger expressed considerable enthusiasm for the partnership， stating， “Intel is excited about the leadership in x86 CPUs and the combined efforts through NVLink for unparalleled AI capabilities. This will create entirely new product categories. This is a very important engineering project that will drive the development of new products， optimized for custom data center and PC products， and prepared for the true AI era.”
Gelsinger’s comments suggest a high degree of optimism within Intel regarding the potential of these joint products. The company anticipates significant impact in both the AI and PC markets， foreseeing the creation of novel product segments. This excitement is a clear indicator of the strategic importance Intel places on this alliance.
While both NVIDIA and Intel remain tight-lipped about the specific release timelines for their jointly developed products， industry analysts speculate that the earliest visible results might not emerge before 2027. For PC enthusiasts， this collaboration could herald a new era of performance. Given NVIDIA’s current success in integrating its RTX 5070-class GPUs into ARM-based SoCs， a hypothetical future Intel processor incorporating an RTX 6070-level GPU could dramatically reshape the landscape of PC gaming and performance computing.
