Intel stock price today: 3 possible reasons why INTC shares are up

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) has had a pretty rough year. Year-to-date, the company’s stock price has fallen over 56% to a close of just under $22 per share on Friday. In August, in addition to reporting another disappointing quarter for its Q2 results, the company also announced it was laying off around 15,000 workers.

Once the chipmaker heavyweight in the tech world, Intel has firmly lost that crown to Nvidia, which has seen its fortunes soar thanks to its chips being the backbone of the AI revolution.

Still, Intel investors finally got some good news on Friday when the stock rose 3.3%. Today, in premarket trading, Intel shares are currently another 2.7% higher to $22.45 at the time of this writing. What’s sending the stock higher? There are three likely reasons.

A deal with Amazon

Last week, Intel and Amazon announced that they have entered into an agreement that will see Intel making custom artificial intelligence chips for Amazon’s cloud services unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

As Reuters noted, the multimillion-dollar deal is a huge vote of confidence in Intel’s favor. One of the largest tech companies on the planet believes that Intel can deliver and that its chips can help it compete in the AI space.

In a press release, Intel said the manufacturing agreement “is a significant expansion of the two companies’ longstanding strategic collaboration to help customers power virtually any workload and accelerate the performance of artificial intelligence (AI) applications.”

When the deal was announced on September 16, Intel shares surged 8% after the closing bell.

A Qualcomm buyout of Intel?

On September 20, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters reported that in recent days, semiconductor behemoth Qualcomm approached Intel to discuss a buyout. If Qualcomm did buy Intel, its would be one of the most seismic acquisitions in the history of the semiconductor industry.

However, there are a lot of unknowns at this time. There have been no reports of the numbers being discussed, so it is unknown how much Qualcomm would be prepared to offer Intel and its investors for the company. Also, the talks are reported to be in the early stages—and could always lead nowhere. Still, they do seem to be serious as Reuters reported that Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon is directly involved in the discussions.

Of course, should Qualcomm make a formal offer to acquire Intel—and should Intel accept—a buyout is far from a certainty as the deal would need to clear heavy regulatory scrutiny and hurdles. But the news of the deal sent Intel shares up 3.3% on Friday.

Apollo Global Management may invest billions in Intel

Finally, on Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Apollo Global Management has offered to make an investment worth up to $5 billion in Intel. The investment would be equity-based, according to the report. More important than the cash injection is what a potential investment signals: Apollo has confidence in Intel’s turnaround plans.

But it’s also important to note that Intel has not accepted the offer yet. Indeed, Bloomberg cautions that the size of the investment could still change or the investment discussions could not come to fruition. In other words: nothing is certain yet.

Still, news of the talks may have been what’s helped Intel shares climb over 2.7% in premarket trading this morning.

We’e reached out to Intel for comment on the reports about Qualcomm and Apollo and will update this post if we hear back.