AMD says it will buy Intel, completing the strangest reversal in chip history

The one-time challenger is now worth more than its old rival, but swallowing Intel would take the industry's power shift to absurd new heights

By Julio Franco April 1, 2026, 0:26 9 comments

WTF?! In a move that feels less like a corporate transaction and more like the final punchline to a 40-year industry rivalry, AMD announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Intel, the company it has spent decades chasing, imitating, undercutting, suing, licensing from, and lately outperforming.

The all-stock transaction, which AMD described as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to unify x86 innovation," would combine the two companies under a single umbrella just a few years after such an outcome would have sounded ridiculous.

For most of modern computing history, Intel was the empire and AMD the scrappy survivor, the perpetual second source that somehow kept finding ways to stay alive. Now, after a bruising run of ...