FILE - Intel’s Jones Farm Campus in Hillsboro, Ore., July 8, 2025.
Morgan Barnaby / OPB
If you asked analysts last spring about Intel, they’d tell you the chipmaker was in trouble.
“A year ago, the conversation about Intel was about whether we could survive,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan told investors last month. “Today, it’s about how quickly we can add manufacturing capacity and scale our supply to meet enormous demand for our products. This is a fundamentally different company today, and we still have a lot of work ahead.”
Intel, which employs around 18,000 Oregonians mostly in Washington County, had a few things stacked against them last year — namely, the major semiconductor firm had lost ground to other firms when it came to making chips for the booming artificial intelligence industry.
But for AI to keep growing, it needs more data centers to process massive amounts of information as fast as possible — and it turns out, Intel chips can help power those data centers. Over the last year, Intel got a nod of approval from the U.S. government, which bought stock in the chipmaker. It also formed an important partnership with Nvidia, a global leader in AI technology.
Intel also slashed costs internally, including cutting more than 3,000 jobs in Oregon. Intel was able to help its margins by cutting costs. At the same time, Intel was able to get more of its chips to power data centers crucial to the AI industry.
Fast forward to this spring, and Intel’s stock is surging. It rose from under $45 per share in April to a peak of $132 earlier this month, before settling down to around $120 at the end of the week. Changes in stock prices can often indicate how investors feel about the short term prospects of a company and isn’t always a predictor of long term success.
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Analysts are applauding Tan and the company’s turnaround.
“All credit to Lip-Bu Tan for changing the culture and changing the story and the sentiment around Intel in just one year,” Ryuta Makino, research analyst at Gabelli investment firm, said. “I think a lot of people now are very bullish on Intel. Last year, I think a lot of people thought this company will go under, but I think now it’s all about can this company become a $1 trillion company.”
Economists and analysts like Makino warn that Intel’s upswing is unlikely to yield robust job growth in Oregon. But it does mean a company important to the state’s manufacturing sector will continue to be a reliable anchor company for the region instead of a potential drag.
However, quickly scaling up production of microchips is challenging for any company.
“The demand is so high,” Makino said of chips to power AI, “And they’re just starting to ramp up the capacity — and ramping up the capacity for the entire industry takes time. It’s not something you can do overnight.”
Rapid expansion is reliant on two components: available material and a skilled workforce. Makino said it takes years, and those supply constraints will stick with the industry for the foreseeable future.
That’s one reason why Intel isn’t likely to go on a hiring spree. Even if it had the talent — a substantial if — it might not be able to secure the supplies.
Intel’s importance to Oregon is less as a singular force in the industry, but more as a critical part of the tech ecosystem known as the Silicon Forest.
Brannigan Vogt is a workforce analyst at the Oregon Employment Department focusing on Washington County.
“Intel is certainly the most famous and well known of all the companies, but it’s not a one company town.”
He said the county is home to other chipmakers, as well as to firms that support and serve semiconductor companies. Washington County is an employment hub in Oregon, with nearly 300,000 jobs, including 46,000 jobs in manufacturing fields, like semiconductors.
Vogt said manufacturing employment is down in Washington County 7% — about 3,500 — since March 2025. He’s hopeful the downward trend is over, but doesn’t expect it to reverse course. Anecdotally, companies are telling him they don’t see sales picking up fast enough to justify more workers. It goes back, in part, to the supply constraints — if a company can’t get certain parts for its machines, it won’t order tools and services from peer companies.
“The main thing that I’ve caught is a lack of demand,” Vogt said, “And lack of demand for their goods and services leading to them not needing to hire. There have been certain firms and, and certain anecdotes of certain growth or growth spots and opportunities for some firms in small specific ways.”
Despite investor and analyst confidence in Intel, the company did lose money in the first three months of the year — a lot of money. For the first quarter the chipmaker reported a nearly $4.3 billion loss.
But Tan told investors during the first quarter earnings call that the majority of the company’s troubles were behind it.
“Intel is now a very different company than when I first joined over a year ago,” Tan said. “We have taken and continue to take deliberate steps to rebuild Intel into a more competitive and more profitable company.”