INTEL: New AI chip is "damn fast"!

Last Thursday, the share of the chip company INTEL briefly tested our cost level (USD 26.71) again. This should have been the last "twitch" downwards, unless company-external factors (e.g. debt ceiling) put a spoke in "our" wheel. In any case, the competitor Nvidia has presented last week with good numbers and facts; the huge difference, the stock of Nvidia is downright abstrusively highly valued... the P/E ratio shot up to 219x, which is about ten times the average valuation of a US stock. But that's how they are, the Yanks, if you supposedly have to have something, the price doesn't matter (vice versa). We definitely feel much more comfortable with our exposure to INTEL and it will only be a matter of time when the stock picks up as well. We link this fact not least to the recent "Supercomputing" conference in Germany, where new details on the planned artificial intelligence chip called "Falcon Shores" were unveiled. This is supposed to include 288 gigabytes of working memory (RAM) as well as allow calculations with 8-bit floating point numbers (?). Just such features will shape the future, especially since new trends like chat GPT are virtually crying out for more powerful chips. However, INTEL is "doomed" to be able to deliver such chips as quickly as possible in order to finally "torpedo" the competition, such as Nvidia or AMD. INTEL is definitely under pressure because the market presence for AI chips is still rather weak and it often takes too long until "revolutionary" market launches stir up the competitors. This is what happened with the Ponte Vecchio chip (PVC), which should have been a direct competitor to the Nvidia H100 chip; development began in 2018 and the launch was delayed from 2021 to 2023. Now, shipments for Argonne National Lab's Aurora supercomputer, based on Ponte Vecchio, are said to be nearing completion. Aurora is expected to become one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world; this is confirmed in expert circles. If this is not good news...!

Remains the chip war between the USA and China. Last week, China also announced measures, namely a first ban on the use of Micron Technology chips in certain areas. So this is the "tit-for-tat" against the restriction of Chinese access to key technologies. The USA has still not understood that China will certainly not be restricted! The price war could even be to China's advantage. The bottom line is that this conflict casts a shadow over the chip industry. Most importantly, the bans make certain investment decisions more difficult for all chip manufacturers, as well as supply chain management (managing the flow of goods, data and finances for products or services, from raw material procurement to customer delivery). Nevertheless, we are not too worried about INTEL in this regard, but the group must remain competitive with high quality. Target price: USD 35.50!

INTEL is listed on the NYSE in New York under the symbol INTC, the security number is 941'595, last price approx. USD 29.