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Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) was among Jim Cramer’s latest stock calls, as he suggested investors balance portfolios with hot and cold stocks. Expressing hope that the company can “turn things around,” Cramer said:

Apparently… That’s no longer good enough, and maybe you have to have like the super future. Let’s hope that Intel, with a magnificent surprise top and bottom line tonight, can turn things around. What an amazing quarter from Lip-Bu Tan, has been there for one year and one month. It is a miracle.

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) designs and manufactures processors, chips, memory, and related hardware. Additionally, it provides software, optimization solutions, and AI-enabled platforms. On April 20, Cramer mentioned the company and said:

Next, we got three more non-storage semiconductor stocks. Intel in first place, Intel up 59%. Monolithic Power Systems in seventh place, up 47%. AMD, eighth place, up 42%. The semis are all over this top 10 list, leading the way since the bottom, and Intel’s at the head of the pack. Isn’t that fantastic? Intel was America’s pre-eminent chipmaker for decades and fell on hard times for many years, mostly because of a lack of leadership. But now it’s making a major comeback under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who’s a remarkable man. After stabilizing the business, he obtained some major votes of confidence when the U.S. government and NVIDIA both took stakes in Intel last year. Both those parties are now looking at huge, huge gains in just seven or eight months’ time…

This latest run for Intel has been all about the realization that CPUs, not GPUs that NVIDIA makes, CPUs, their bread and butter, have become a key bottleneck for the AI data center buildout. As more companies embrace agentic AI, which does various autonomous tasks, they need more general-purpose computing horsepower. You get that from the central processing units, not the GPUs. And that’s why we also see AMD, the number two CPU producer, making the top 10, along with Monolithic Power Systems, which makes small energy-efficient power management systems in there as well.

For Intel specifically, though, the company’s reporting on Thursday night, and we’re torn on this one. On the one hand, the stock’s up so much we worry that there’s nothing the company says to justify its move. Remember what happened the last quarter? That’s what occurred. On the other hand, though, we think Intel’s move has happened so fast that many analysts and investors have missed it. They might be itching to get into the stock, especially if it retreats in reaction to a good result. I am surprised they didn’t come in today when it was down a couple.

While we acknowledge the potential of INTC as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

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