Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) rose 1% Thursday following the announcement of a multiyear collaboration with Google to advance AI and cloud infrastructure, focusing on Intel Xeon processors and custom infrastructure processing units.
Under the agreement, Intel Xeon processors will continue powering Google Cloud infrastructure across AI, inference and general-purpose workloads. The companies will also expand co-development of custom ASIC-based IPUs designed to improve efficiency, utilization and performance at scale.
Google Cloud currently deploys Intel Xeon processors across its workload-optimized instances, including the latest Intel Xeon 6 processors powering C4 and N4 instances. These platforms support workloads ranging from large-scale AI training coordination to latency-sensitive inference and general-purpose computing.
The custom ASIC-based IPUs will offload networking, storage and security functions from host CPUs, improving utilization and enabling more predictable performance across hyperscale AI environments. By handling infrastructure tasks traditionally managed by CPUs, the IPUs aim to unlock greater compute capacity and allow cloud providers to scale more efficiently.
"AI is reshaping how infrastructure is built and scaled," said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel. "Scaling AI requires more than accelerators - it requires balanced systems. CPUs and IPUs are central to delivering the performance, efficiency and flexibility modern AI workloads demand."
Amin Vahdat, SVP & Chief Technologist, AI Infrastructure at Google, commented that CPUs and infrastructure acceleration remain a cornerstone of AI systems, adding that Intel has been a trusted partner for nearly two decades.
The collaboration aligns Intel and Google across multiple generations of Intel Xeon processors to improve performance, energy efficiency and total cost of ownership across Google’s global infrastructure.
