This Is That Hidden Winner From The NVIDIA-Intel Collaboration

NVIDIA has announced a $5 billion investment in Intel and a partnership to develop chips for PCs and data centers jointly.

This deal has driven up the stock prices of both companies and contributed to the U.S. stock market hitting another all-time high; however, there could be other "winners" that are also expected to benefit from this alliance, including lithography giant ASML. Intel has long been a key customer of ASML's lithography machines, which are critical for semiconductor manufacturing.

Following NVIDIA's announcement of the investment in Intel, Bank of America raised its price target for ASML from €724 to €941, an increase of approximately 30%, while maintaining a "buy" rating for the semiconductor equipment manufacturer.

ASML's latest closing price in European markets was €794, with a 7.73% increase on Thursday. Meanwhile, its U.S. stock price rose 6.37% to $927.8 on the same day.

NVIDIA dominates the AI chip market, holding over 80% market share, and is the leading computing infrastructure provider in the AI era. Its products are widely used in artificial intelligence training, inference, and other areas. Currently, NVIDIA is the world's most valuable company, with a market capitalization of $4.28 trillion.

On Thursday, NVIDIA announced a broad partnership with Intel, which includes a $5 billion investment in Intel. As part of the collaboration, Intel will provide custom x86 CPUs for NVIDIA's AI infrastructure portfolio, and Intel will incorporate NVIDIA's GPUs in its future x86 PC chips.

Bank of America believes this partnership will make Intel more competitive in the data center and PC sectors, thereby benefiting semiconductor equipment suppliers like ASML. ASML supplies key lithography machines used in chip manufacturing.

Based on expectations of increased sales of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment and high-NA equipment to Intel and SK Hynix, Bank of America raised its 2027 revenue forecast for ASML from €35.8 billion to €39.2 billion and increased its earnings per share estimate from €29.92 to €34.18.

Bank of America's new price target for ASML is based on a 23x enterprise value to EBITDA (EV/EBITDA) multiple, up from the previous 20x. The revision reflects a more competitive landscape among customers following partnerships between Samsung and Tesla, as well as Intel and NVIDIA. Additionally, the opening of several new U.S. fabs is expected to accelerate ASML's revenue growth in 2027.

Ray Wang, Chief Semiconductor Analyst at Futurum Group, also noted that the $5 billion investment will benefit Intel's partners, such as ASML and Synopsys, as Intel will have stronger capital expenditure capabilities.