Name: At its most basic level Intel is a meme stock, says Deepwater's Gene Munster
Uploaded: 2026-01-22T22:54:58+00:00
Duration: 318 s

Speakers

Gene Munster — Managing Partner, Deepwater Asset Management

Melissa Lee — Host, Fast Money

Summary

Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management joins Fast Money to discuss Intel's latest quarter and valuation. He argues Intel's rally is meme-driven rather than fundamentally supported and expects the stock to go lower. He also highlights Nvidia's superior growth and a broader AI infrastructure shift from training to inference, which should drive memory and infrastructure spending faster for longer.

Intel stock has rallied sharply on government, SoftBank, and Nvidia endorsements.
Munster says Intel remains a 3% growth turnaround story with weak guidance.
He thinks Intel fundamentals imply the stock should be down about 15%.
Apple's potential use of Intel 18A is possible but not fundamental-changing.
Nvidia is expected to grow about 65% next year versus Street at 50%.
Munster says inference will be much larger than training over time.
He expects AI infrastructure and memory spending to grow faster for longer.

Ideas

Gene Munster Managing Partner, Deepwater Asset Management 0:35

Intel meme rally unsupported; stock goes lower.

Intel is a meme stock at its most basic level. The stock has rallied about 100% this year on endorsements from the US government, SoftBank's $2B investment, Nvidia's $5B investment, and hope it can catch lightning in a bottle. Fundamentally, Intel is only a 3% growth turnaround story while competitors grow exponentially faster; the quarter lacked the higher guidance and customer wins he wanted. Based on fundamentals, the stock should be down about 15%, and his sense is it goes lower. Apple could become a foundry customer, but that does not change the fundamental scope, and advanced foundry remains limited until more customers sign up; CPUs have a place, but the most exciting, most valuable, fastest-growing AI infrastructure is on the GPU side, where Intel lacks presence.

Gene Munster Managing Partner, Deepwater Asset Management 0:43

Nvidia growth likely exceeds Street estimates.

Nvidia is the relevant comparable and he expects it to grow about 65% next year versus Street at 50%. Nvidia also invested $5B in Intel to get an edge and angle on the mobile side of AI, learnings, and potential distribution. He views the GPU side as the most exciting, most valuable, and fastest-growing part of AI infrastructure, where Intel has little presence.

Gene Munster Managing Partner, Deepwater Asset Management 4:34

Inference drives faster AI infrastructure growth.

The buy-side and sell-side focus has been on training, but inference will be much bigger, potentially hundreds of thousands of times larger than training infrastructure spend. He believes the market is starting to recognize that, whether through memory or other infrastructure, spending will grow faster for longer.

At its most basic level Intel is a meme stock, says Deepwater's Gene Munster

Summary

Ideas

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