Intel stock crashes 29%, its worst day since 1974, despite beating Q3 estimates

Intel stock had its worst day in more than half a century on Friday, 30 October. Shares closed down 28.6% at $65.76, from $92.07 a day earlier, after the chipmaker's fourth-quarter forecast fell well short of Wall Street's. That erased roughly $140 billion of market value from a company whose stock had risen about 150% this year, according to CNBC. The only steeper one-day fall in Intel's history was in July 1974.

The strange part: the quarter Intel had just reported was good.

Our 30-second version:

Image: Intel in Deutschland / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

What happened to Intel stock?

Intel reported its third-quarter results after the market closed on Thursday, 29 October. In its earnings release, revenue rose 21% from a year earlier to $16.5 billion, and adjusted earnings per share were 52 cents, against about 40 cents expected by analysts polled by LSEG. Gross margin improved to 44.1% on an adjusted basis.

Then came the outlook. Intel guided fourth-quarter revenue to $15 billion to $16 billion, with adjusted earnings of 25 cents a share and an adjusted gross margin of about 38%. Analysts had expected about $17.1 billion and 43 cents. The shares fell more than 20% in after-hours trading and kept falling on Friday.

Chart: NextDiff. Data: Intel Q3 2026 earnings release; LSEG via CNBC.

Why did a beat turn into a crash?

Three things, all about the next few months rather than the last three:

• PC demand is shrinking. Intel's Client Computing and Physical AI group, which sells PC chips and made $8.1 billion, about half of revenue, shrank 5% in the quarter. Intel expects that business to fall more than 20% from this quarter to the next, Reuters reported. CEO Lip-Bu Tan said soaring memory chip prices are straining corporate IT budgets, so companies are buying fewer PCs.
• It won't end soon. Chief financial officer David Zinsner told analysts: "We see the PC slowdown continuing at least through the first half of next year."
• A factory problem. Tan said an accident at Intel's factory in Israel caused an extended shutdown that will reduce server chip shipments, according to The Motley Fool.

The irony is that the growth story investors bought this year is real. Data Center and AI revenue rose 78% to $7.3 billion on demand for Xeon server processors, and Intel Foundry's revenue rose 58% to $6.7 billion. Tan said in the release that "demand for our CPUs remains robust". But after a 150% run, the stock was priced for everything to go right, and a weaker quarter ahead plus thinner margins was enough to break it.

Image: Coolcaesar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How it hit other chip stocks

Intel's warning landed on a market already nervous about how much tech giants are spending on AI. Alphabet had its worst day on record on Thursday. On Friday, CNBC reported Qualcomm down 11%, Broadcom down more than 5% and Nvidia down 4%, with the Nasdaq Composite down 2.9%. Reuters counted server makers Dell, HPE and Super Micro down 6% to 10%, ASML down 4.6% in Europe and TSMC's US-listed shares down 3.3%. Benzinga put the one-day loss across chip stocks at about $1 trillion.

There's a policy angle too. The US government took a 10% stake in Intel in August 2025, and CNBC estimates that stake lost about $12 billion in value on Friday, though it is still in profit. Nvidia, which also holds a large Intel stake, saw about $6 billion of that value disappear.

Image: US Department of Commerce (public domain). Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, right, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Why it matters for people who build and buy tech

For PC buyers, the message is that memory prices are now big enough to change what companies buy, and Intel expects that to last into 2027. For anyone tracking the AI build-out, the split is the story: the server and foundry businesses tied to AI are growing fast, while the consumer PC side shrinks. Intel also faces more competition for PC chips than a few years ago, as our RTX Spark laptop review roundup shows.

What's next

Watch three things: whether memory prices ease, whether the Israel factory is back to full output, and progress on Intel's next manufacturing process, 14A, for which Intel released version 0.9 of its design kit in October. This is news, not investment advice.