Chen Libu's God-Feathered Ascension! Citrini Praises Intel's "Most Outstanding Earnings Report This Year" and Hopes to Capture TSMC CoWoS Spillover Demand

Intel’s latest earnings report came in better than market expectations, driving a sharp after-hours jump in its stock price and prompting the market to reassess the effectiveness of the transformation since CEO Pat Gelsinger took over. Research firm Citrini said in a post on X that among its “2026’s 26 trading themes,” the 4th theme is “Advanced Packaging.” The core is the catch-up opportunity for Intel and its advanced packaging ecosystem. And after Intel released its earnings, Citrini was even more direct, saying this set of results “has a chance to become this year’s most outstanding earnings report.”

Intel’s strong earnings and revenue outlook show confidence

Chain News previously reported that Intel’s first-quarter revenue grew 7% to $13.6 billion. Earnings per share (EPS) excluding certain items was $0.29. The second-quarter revenue outlook is $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion, with the midpoint of $14.3 billion above market expectations. After the earnings were released, Intel’s stock surged 20% in after-hours trading, reaching $80 and setting a new all-time high. Since Pat Gelsinger took over in March last year, when the stock was around a $20 low point, INTC has risen 3-fold.

(Intel’s earnings guidance beat expectations, AI demand drives a CPU turnaround; since Pat Gelsinger took over, INTC has already risen 3-fold)

AI demand drives not only GPUs—CPUs and packaging are also being repriced

In the past, the market largely understood the AI semiconductor battleground as NVIDIA vs. ASICs, TSMC vs. Intel, and Blackwell vs. TPU—but Citrini believes this framework overlooks the real bottleneck: advanced packaging.

Citrini pointed out that Google TPU, Amazon Trainium, Meta MTIA, and even OpenAI’s self-developed chips that may be released in the future—regardless of who ultimately wins—will all need advanced packaging first. That means the more ASIC plans super-large-scale cloud providers have, the more it will actually benefit advanced packaging, because these designs are not mutually substitutive but instead jointly consume limited packaging capacity.

This also explains why Intel’s earnings were re-priced by the market. AI data centers don’t just need GPUs; they still heavily rely on server CPUs such as Xeon to coordinate computation logic. At the same time, as AI chips grow bigger and get closer to the limits of photomasks, designs must be split into multiple chiplets and then connected through advanced packaging. Packaging has shifted from being a back-end service to a key architecture layer that determines whether AI chips can truly deliver performance.

Intel doesn’t need to beat TSMC—its opportunity is in capturing CoWoS spillover demand

Citrini’s bullish thesis on Intel is not that Intel can immediately comprehensively surpass TSMC in advanced process technology. Instead, Intel’s EMIB and Foveros could become alternative export channels when demand for TSMC’s CoWoS outstrips supply.

EMIB is Intel’s 2.5D packaging solution, which can use a silicon bridge to connect different chips. Foveros, on the other hand, is a 3D stacked packaging technology. Citrini believes this gives Intel a chance to offer a “chips can be manufactured at TSMC or Samsung, but advanced packaging is done at Intel” model—turning it into a relief valve for TSMC’s CoWoS spillover demand.

In the era where AI chips move toward multiple dies, multiple chiplets, and stacked HBM memory, packaging is no longer just a cost center—it becomes the main battlefield that determines performance, yields, and bottlenecks across the supply chain. If Intel can first enter the supply chains for Apple, cloud giants, and AI ASIC customer ecosystems through packaging, and then pair that with the 18A process and the U.S. onshore manufacturing advantage, it could gradually expand the credibility of its foundry business.

Pat Gelsinger brings Intel back to the AI supply-chain table

Chain News previously reported that Intel’s foundry services (IFS) generated first-quarter revenue of $5.4 billion, up 16% year over year, showing that the strategy of transforming into a wafer foundry has begun to produce initial results. Although most revenue still comes from within Intel today, the market’s expectations of external customers and AI demand have led it to re-evaluate Intel’s value.

After Pat Gelsinger took over, Intel’s story is no longer just about “playing catch-up to TSMC’s process technology.” Instead, it is more pragmatically moving into AI CPUs, advanced packaging, the localization of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, and repairing the balance sheet. This has repackaged Intel—from a “lost giant that missed the AI GPU wave”—into a “potential fill-in player in the supply-chain gap for AI infrastructure.”

Citrini’s advanced packaging deals are not only betting on Intel itself; they also include beneficiaries within the Intel AP ecosystem such as Amkor, Kulicke & Soffa, and BESI. If AI ASICs and chiplet architectures continue to expand, packaging capacity, packaging equipment, and OSAT companies could all become beneficiaries in the next phase.

This article Pat Gelsinger—brings Citrini praise! Intel gets called “this year’s most outstanding earnings report,” hoping to capture TSMC’s CoWoS spillover demand first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.