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Google expands partnership with Intel for AI chips

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Why This Matters

Google's expanded partnership with Intel to utilize the latest Xeon 6 CPUs for AI workloads signifies a strategic shift towards more balanced and efficient AI infrastructure, challenging Nvidia's dominance in the market. This move highlights the growing importance of CPUs in AI training and inference, emphasizing the need for diverse hardware solutions in the industry.

Key Takeaways

Intel Xeon 6 processors are shown to CNBC at Intel's advanced packaging facility in Chanfler, Ariona, on November 17, 2025.

Google has committed to using multiple generations of Intel central processing units in its artificial intelligence data centers, an expansion of an existing partnership.

The internet giant has long relied on Intel processors, dating back to its earliest server rack ambitions nearly three decades ago. Intel's newest Xeon 6 CPUs will now run AI training and inference workloads, potentially giving the chipmaker a stronger position in an AI market that's so far been dominated by Nvidia .

"Their Xeon roadmap gives us confidence that we can continue to meet the growing performance and efficiency demands of our workloads," Amin Vahdat, Google's chief technologist for AI infrastructure, said in a statement Thursday.

No financial terms were disclosed, nor did the companies provide a timeline for the agreement.

The deal lands as the CPU takes center stage in the next phase of the AI race. Dion Harris, Nvidia 's head of AI infrastructure, told CNBC in March that CPUs are "becoming the bottleneck" as agentic workloads move compute needs beyond the graphics processing units that have ruled AI thus far.

"Scaling AI requires more than accelerators — it requires balanced systems," Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement about the Google deal on Thursday.

Intel, which has been struggling for years to keep pace with new trends in technology, sold a 10% stake to the U.S. government in August, with the Trump administration touting the chipmaker's ability to make advanced chips on U.S. soil. The following month, Nvidia said it would purchase a $5 billion stake in Intel.

Shares of Intel have nearly tripled in the past year, fueled by those investments.

Intel makes the latest Xeon processor on its most advanced 18A technology at its Arizona chip fabrication plant that opened last year. Despite pouring billions into the foundry side of its business, Intel's own processors remain the largest customer at the new fab.

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