Two semiconductor giants saw massive stock jumps on Thursday and Friday after major Wall Street upgrades pointed to an explosive growth trajectory driven by agentic AI. Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya double-upgraded Intel from Underperform to Buy and raised his price target 41% to $135, while also naming AMD his top pick in the CPU space and lifting its target to $560 from $500. Hours later, Citi upgraded AMD to Buy from Neutral with a $575 target, arguing the market is undervaluing AMD’s GPU potential, especially a massive deal with Meta that could bring $15 billion in revenue per gigawatt.
Arya’s core thesis: agentic AI workloads—tasks that plan, decide, and execute—will heavily lean on server CPUs, expanding the total addressable market to over $170 billion by 2030, up from a previous $125 billion estimate. Intel, he says, could capture about 25% of that, translating to over $40 billion in server CPU revenue. For AMD, the Venice next-gen processors and a 37% CAGR in server CPUs from 2025 to 2030 underscore the opportunity. On the GPU front, Citi’s Atif Malik highlighted a previously announced six-gigawatt, four-year agreement between AMD and Meta, with custom MI450 chips ramping in H2 2026. Citi now sees AMD AI sales hitting $33 billion in 2027 and $50.8 billion in 2028.
Intel’s foundry business is another underappreciated driver, with potential customers including Apple and MediaTek. A partnership with Cadence Design Systems adds further momentum. The earnings backdrop is strong: Intel crushed Q1 estimates with $0.29 EPS versus a $0.01 consensus and revenue of $13.58 billion, up 7.4% year-over-year. AMD’s price target increases reflect renewed confidence in both CPU and GPU segments, and its 52-week range now stretches up to $546.44, with Thursday’s close at $488.66.
