Happy Friday, investors. Yet another legacy tech company had a monster one-day stock rally, barely a week removed from Oracle’s historic spike. Unsurprisingly, you can chalk it up to another development in the AI story.
Huang’s Midas touch
Money falls from the sky when Nvidia does a deal.
Indeed, as I wrote last week about Oracle, only in the age of AI can a 57-year-old company jump more than 30% in a single day.
Intel added roughly $27 billion in market cap on Thursday after Nvidia announced it took a $5 billion stake in the company.
After the initial spike, shares of Intel closed about 23% higher in the session.
Nvidia, meanwhile, finished up 3.7%.
“This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel’s CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem — a fusion of two world-class platforms,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in a statement.
“Together, we will expand our ecosystems and lay the foundation for the next era of computing.”
Investors seem optimistic about not only Nvidia’s partnership with Intel, but those of the US government and SoftBank.
In August, the government deployed $8.9 billion into the chipmaker for 433.3 million shares, while SoftBank invested $2 billion.
As of Thursday, Intel is suddenly a top-performing AI investment in 2025, ahead of Nvidia and lagging only Oracle.
Angelo Zino, equity analyst at CFRA Research, maintained his “hold” rating on Intel after the news.
Nvidia’s involvement, he said, should be taken as a vote of confidence for Intel investors.
“The expanded partnership is solely for products, which has completely missed the AI boat, and we question whether this will significantly improve Intel’s data center prospects and drive earnings upside,” Zino wrote in a note, adding that he would “avoid chasing shares.”
Nancy Tengler, CEO and CIO at Laffer Tengler Investments, said the private sector should be able to resolve Intel’s technology issues.
In her view, Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, and Lam Research will be the winning stocks as a result of the deal.
“This may be the first step of an acquisition or break-up of the company among US chip makers though it is entirely possible the company will remain a shadow of its former self but will survive,” Tengler said.
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Market snapshot
Elsewhere
📉Jobless claims fell last week, further complicating the snapshot of the US labor market. Weekly claims dropped by 33,000 to 231,000 in the week to September 12, a level close to pre-pandemic norms. (WSJ)
🏠 President Trump asked the Supreme Court to let him fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. The Justice Department asked the court Thursday to at least temporarily pause a Washington federal judge’s ruling that let Cook stay at the Fed. (Bloomberg)
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Rapid-fire
Meta launched its new smart glasses and its chief product officer says they are the future of computing (CNBC)
Cracker Barrel stock fell another 8% as its brand continues to falter (Investopedia)
President Trump lauded billions of dollars of UK tech investments during his visit to the UK (WSJ)
CrowdStrike rallied double-digits following upbeat long-term guidance (CNBC)
Former Trump adviser Gary Cohn said the US cannot rely on foreign chips (Yahoo Finance)
President Trump hinted at “good news” coming on Russia’s war with Ukraine (CNBC)
The Fed’s own economists disagree on where the economy’s heading next (Opening Bell Daily)
Last thing
This is incredible:
The share of the top 10% of US consumers now account for 49.2% of all consumer spending, the highest level in data dating back to 1989.
By comparison, this share was 43.2% in Q4 2019.
Over the last 3 decades, this percentage has risen 13 points.
Consumer
— #The Kobeissi Letter (#@KobeissiLetter)
6:13 PM • Sep 18, 2025
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About me
📰 I’m Phil Rosen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Opening Bell Daily. I’ve published books, lived on three continents, and won awards for my journalism, which has appeared in Business Insider, Fortune, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg and Inc. Magazine.
I write our flagship newsletter to prepare you for each trading day — unpacking markets, economic data and Wall Street with analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
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