As the shortage that began with a memory crunch in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) spreads to the central processing unit (CPU) market, Intel and AMD are seeing their stock prices and earnings surge together. CPU scarcity, which received relatively less attention due to the memory shortage issue, is serving as a structural growth momentum for the two corporations. Intel said demand for its CPUs is growing by up to four times compared with graphics processing units (GPUs), while AMD is setting a record high for server CPU sales for the fourth consecutive quarter.
According to the industry on the 3rd, the long-term agreement (LTA) practice that Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have signed with big tech companies to secure memory semiconductors is spreading to the CPU industry. The spread of agentic AI is creating a "dual boom" phase that is lifting both memory and CPUs at the same time, analysts said. While the memory crunch has become visible in the market as a sharp rise in DRAM and NAND flash prices, the surge in CPU demand is being reflected belatedly in the form of delivery delays, price hikes, and a surge in Intel and AMD stock prices. Intel's share price has jumped more than 480% over the past year.
◇ "Four GPUs to one CPU"… CPU shortage cited by the Intel CEO
Pat Gelsinger, Intel's chief executive officer (CEO), appeared on a podcast on the 18th of last month and, citing conversations with frontier model companies, noted that for some customers in agent workloads, CPU demand is reaching a 4-to-1 ratio compared with GPUs. As corporations adopt agentic AI, the point is that when they buy one GPU, they are purchasing up to four CPUs alongside it. Gelsinger also said at a JPMorgan conference that CPU dependence is rising more steeply than the market expected during agent orchestration and workload optimization.
Structural growth in the CPU market is also evident in changes to the competitive landscape. Nvidia unveiled a standalone CPU rack for the first time at GTC 2026 in March. That same month, Arm announced its own AGI CPU and two types of air- and liquid-cooling racks, directly entering the in-house CPU market. The fact that even GPU specialist corporations are moving into in-house CPU development suggests the market size and demand pressure are steep. According to foreign media, Intel's lead times have stretched to as long as six months due to a backlog of unfilled CPU orders, and AMD's lead times for some products have also lengthened to eight to 10 weeks. Although delivery delays are usually read as a negative signal, in this case it is interpreted to mean the two corporations have that much greater visibility into future sales.
An industry official said, "Just as companies that failed to lock in DRAM and NAND contracts during the memory shortage experienced production disruptions, in the CPU market, whether you can secure volumes has emerged as a variable that dictates schedules for building servers and data centers."
◇ From short-term orders to multi-year deals… "It's the LTA era for CPUs, too"
A shift in CPU procurement methods also stands out. In the past, CPUs were typically ordered on a quarterly or short-term basis, but recently there have been signs that hyperscalers and server vendors are moving to sign LTAs to secure volumes years in advance. This is similar to the pattern in the memory market, where hyperscalers locked in DRAM and NAND volumes with long-term wafer contracts. The change in procurement practices is interpreted as a signal that Intel and AMD have secured that much more stable mid- to long-term revenue bases.
Brokerages are also raising earnings forecasts for the two corporations. Bank of America (BofA) projected that the server CPU market will grow from $43 billion in 2026 to $125 billion in 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 30.6%. Citi, in particular, forecast that the "agentic CPU" institutional sector alone will reach $59.4 billion by 2030, growing at an average annual rate of 185%.
The market's attention is focused on Intel's second-quarter earnings release set for the 23rd. The pace of Production yield improvement on the 18A process, whether contract manufacturing for Google's tensor processing unit (TPU) will ramp up, and CPU security issues are expected to be tests for future earnings and share price gains.