In case you haven't been paying attention, Intel has been getting banged up lately in both the press and on Wall Street. Over the last 12 months, it's lost just under 43% of its share value as well as its CEO, Pat Gelsinger. It's watched Nvidia and AMD make major gains in the data center market at its expense, and its most recent client processors, the Intel Core Ultra 200S series, were rather underwhelming, especially for gaming.
Probably the biggest concern for Intel was its Q3 2024 earnings, which saw the company post a staggering $16.6 billion loss, the largest the company had ever seen. And while this was generated almost entirely by accelerated depreciation charges and the restructuring required after laying off 15,000 workers, rather than products sitting unsold on the store shelves, it still went off like a bomb on Wall Street and in Washington, where talk about how Intel could be "saved" remains rampant.
