By Trefis Team
Publication Date: 2026-11-11 07:36:00
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Intel (INTC) and NVIDIA (NVDA) both sell AI data center chips and say that demand exceeds their supply. For Intel to be the better buy, the company must turn that demand into profit while operating its own factories. Investors pay far less for Intel, pricing it at 5.1 times sales compared to 13.5 for NVIDIA. But with Intel’s PC sales falling, is its server growth enough to make up for them?
Intel Forecast A Smaller Quarter, NVIDIA A Bigger One
According to Intel’s own forecast, server growth will not make up for falling PC sales in the fourth quarter of 2026. Intel guided revenue to $15 billion to $16 billion, falling below the $16.5 billion it reported for the third quarter. Management expects data center sales to keep growing from the third quarter while PC chip sales fall by more than 20%. The forecast also includes lost revenue from an incident at the company’s Fab 28 plant. Management put that hit at roughly $300 million, almost all of it from server products.
Intel is not short of demand for its data center chips. Its data center revenue rose nearly 80% from a year earlier to $7.3 billion in the third quarter, and management said demand for those chips meaningfully exceeds supply.
NVIDIA’s latest forecast is a different kind of news, because almost all of NVIDIA’s sales come from data centers: $89 billion of the $96.2 billion it reported for its quarter ended…
