According to Intel, returns are currently improving by 7 to 8 percent every month. But that could build on quite low initial returns; reports last summer indicated that only 10 percent of chips coming off 18A production lines met Intel's requirements at the time. Intel predicts that supply will increase enough in the coming months to help alleviate the shortages.
“I really believe the first quarter is the low point,” Zinsner said. “We will improve the offering in the second quarter.”
Intel sells everything it can make
If Intel can start making enough chips to meet demand, it should help improve the company's earnings reports.
“We delivered [our Q4 2025] results despite supply constraints, which significantly limits our ability to leverage all the strengths in our underwriting markets,” said Tan. “We are aggressively working to address this and better support our customers' needs going forward.”
Intel has been saying for some time that it sells almost all the chips it can get its hands on. Intel investor relations vice president John Pitzer said last month that Intel would sell more of its Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake Core Ultra Series 2 chips for consumers, as well as its Granite Rapids chips for data centers, if it could get more.
While Intel looks to improve its position in the near term, the company also says it is still making progress on its future manufacturing nodes, including several versions of the 18A process and the upcoming 14A process. Intel is working to bring in “potential third-party customers” who would use the 14A process to make their own chips. If these third parties decide to use Intel's manufacturing facilities, Intel expects to know “beginning the second half of this year and into the first half of 2027,” and then expects to expand production capacity based on the number of third-party customers it finds.
In terms of chip design, Intel also expects its first next-generation Nova Lake chips to be ready “by the end of 2026.” We don't know much about Nova Lake yet, but it should be Intel's next architecture that includes both desktop and laptop processors, while Panther Lake chips are mainly intended for laptops. At least part of the chip will also be manufactured using the 18A process.
