Intel’s server CPU business received a major boost in the second quarter, with average selling prices climbing sharply as customers bought more high-end chips for data center and AI workloads.
According to the company’s latest regulatory filing, Intel’s server processor average selling prices rose 48% year over year in Q2 2026. For the first half of 2026, server CPU prices were up 38% compared with the same period a year earlier. Intel said the increase was largely driven by a richer mix of premium products, while demand-based pricing also played a smaller role as the company worked to offset higher input costs.
The surge highlights how artificial intelligence is reshaping the server market. While GPUs and AI accelerators often dominate the conversation, general-purpose server CPUs remain a critical part of modern data center infrastructure. As AI systems grow more complex, especially with the rise of agentic AI workloads, customers are deploying denser and more capable server platforms.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan pointed to this shift during the company’s earnings discussion, explaining that demand for agentic workloads is increasing CPU density across the server ecosystem. He noted that Intel’s core server CPU business is growing at an unusually strong pace as enterprises and cloud providers continue investing in infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing.
Intel’s data center business delivered particularly strong results in the quarter. Revenue from the segment grew 59% year over year, reaching $6.3 billion. That helped the company post its fastest growth in 15 years, supported by rising demand for processors used in AI-driven data centers.
A key product behind this momentum is Granite Rapids, Intel’s server CPU platform built on the Intel 3 process node. Tan described Intel 3 as the company’s most important server node at the moment, because it supports Granite Rapids production. Demand for Granite Rapids has been especially strong, with Tan saying supply is extremely tight due to the product’s positive market reception.
Intel also reported that server CPU volumes increased 9% year over year in the second quarter. However, the company said demand exceeded available supply during both Q2 2026 and the first half of the year because of internal supply constraints. In other words, Intel could potentially have sold more server chips if it had been able to produce enough to fully meet customer demand.
The combination of higher volumes, stronger pricing, and a shift toward premium server processors suggests Intel is benefiting from a more favorable data center product mix. The company’s ability to capitalize further may depend on how quickly it can ease supply limitations, especially for its most in-demand server products.
For Intel, the latest figures show that CPUs continue to play a vital role in the AI infrastructure boom. While specialized AI chips are central to training and inference, powerful server processors are still needed to support cloud computing, data management, networking, and increasingly complex AI workloads. As data centers expand to handle these demands, Intel’s premium server CPUs appear to be gaining renewed traction.
