Bloomberg Surveillance · Thursday, July 23, 2026
Intel's CFO indicated that the company's capital expenditure this year will increase to approximately $20 billion, up from a previous guidance of $18 billion. This increase is driven by customer demand and long-term agreements (LTAs) for Intel's latest chip-making processes. CEO Pat Gelsinger is described as cautious, only increasing capex when confident in a return on investment, particularly for tooling to boost capacity.
“But he also absolutely underscored that lit Bhutan is a very cautious guy. He does not employee capital and improve or increase capex unless he's sure he's going to get a return on it. And so that's what they're trying to argue for now that they see demand enough where they're willing to spend on the tooling side, specifically, not the space side, to increase that capacity because they think they have the customer customer demand there.”
“So what Dave's into the CFO told me is that capex this year will now be higher about twenty billion dollars. The previous guide was about eighteen and it would also represent your on year capex growth.”
“You know, they have this line Intel which is so consistent on which is like when a customer signs up to use our latest chip making process, we don't announce it. We leave it to the customer. Problem for them is none of the customers have announced it. All they'll say is that they signed loads of deals, loads of LTA's they call them in the first six months of this year and they were like, okay, so we have the deals. That gives us confidence to invest.”