It's the end of an era: Nvidia replaces Intel in a key Dow Jones index, as Team Blue's fortunes tumble

Intel office
(Image credit: Intel)

For 25 years, chip giant Intel has been a key measure of the strength of the semiconductor market, being one of just 30 companies on the Dow Jones Industrial Average index. However, a year of non-stop financial losses and a portfolio of late or underwhelming products have taken their toll on Intel's share price. As a result, S&P Dow Jones has deleted it from the IA index in favour of the AI darling Nvidia.

As things currently stand, Intel's share price is around $23, roughly half what it was a year ago. It has dropped heavily after each financial statement and it's not surprising when one sees the figures. While this year's revenues have been slightly better than in 2023, Intel has suffered a net income loss each quarter.

Unless something akin to a miracle happens in the final months of this year, Intel will be on track to have losses of over $20 billion, which isn't exactly great news for investors. Hence the removal of Intel from the IA index, as S&P Dow Jones explains in its press release (pdf warning ): "The index changes were initiated to ensure a more representative exposure to the semiconductors industry and the materials sector respectively."

News of the deletion, as reported by Ars Technica, couldn't come at a worse time for Intel. With financial losses mounting, it's shed 15% of its workforce to save money. Its new desktop Arrow Lake processors, such as the Core Ultra 9 285K, have been poorly received in the gaming sector. It's been sidelined by AMD and Nvidia too, generating less revenue than either company in the data centre and AI sector.

Intel has spent huge sums of money trying to improve its chip-making foundries, only to pull back on some of the projects and rely almost entirely on TSMC to manufacture its latest processors.

But as grim as things may seem for the 56-year-old company, it's not game over. Intel is a key US military contractor, it's on track to receive funds from the CHIPS and Science Act, and it still holds the largest market share in the CPU client sector.

There's plenty of money coming in—the issue is that too much is going out, right now, and that can be managed by reducing overheads and shutting down divisions that generate little or no income.

From a gaming perspective, that means we're very unlikely to see much in the way of Nvidia-beating graphics cards next year, so if you were hoping that Battlemage would be a great alternative to RDNA 4 or Blackwell in 2025, you're likely to be disappointed.

Alchemist wasn't much of a success for Intel, in terms of revenue and income, so there's little chance that additional funding will be put aside for gaming GPUs (AI GPUs are a different story).

AMD has shown that it's possible to come back from a dire situation, though the market as a whole is very different now from how it was 16 years ago. It's important to consumers that Intel does survive as competition is the best way to keep prices in check but only time will tell what Team Blue will look like in the future.

Best CPU for gamingBest gaming motherboardBest graphics cardBest SSD for gaming


Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.

TOPICS
Nick Evanson
Hardware Writer

Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in 1981, with the love affair starting on a Sinclair ZX81 in kit form and a book on ZX Basic. He ended up becoming a physics and IT teacher, but by the late 1990s decided it was time to cut his teeth writing for a long defunct UK tech site. He went on to do the same at Madonion, helping to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its gaming and hardware section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com and over 100 long articles on anything and everything. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days? 

Read more
Intel office
Intel will be keen to forget 2024 despite its products selling well because its foundries still keep on swallowing money
ARM logo exhibited at ARM stand during the Mobile World Congress (MWC).
'There are lots of tombstones of great tech companies that didn’t reinvent themselves,' says Arm CEO Rene Haas of Intel's recent woes
Bill Gates speaks onstage for a special conversation during "What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates"at The Paris Theater on September 26, 2024 in New York City.
Bill Gates laments Pat Gelsinger's failure to save Intel: 'I was hoping for his sake, for the country's sake that he would be successful'
The NVIDIA stand at the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, September 19, 2024. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Nvidia share price plummets as it loses more than $600B in valuation, the biggest single-day loss in history
Intel Gaudi 3
Intel nixes its next-gen AI GPU but still has plans to take on Nvidia
AMD RX 7900 XT with its original packaging.
AMD clawed back 7% graphics market share from Nvidia at the end of 2024, but the outlook for the whole industry in 2025 looks iffy
Latest in Processors
 photo shows a factory tool that places lids on data center system-on-chips at an Intel fab in Chandler, Arizona, in December 2023. In February 2024, Intel Corporation launched Intel Foundry as the world’s first systems foundry for the AI era, delivering leadership in technology, resiliency and sustainability.
So, wait, now TSMC is supposedly pitching a joint venture with Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom to run Intel's ailing chip fabs?
Pipboy holds up an open padlock.
A BIOS update could be all that's stopping you or someone else from jailbreaking your old AMD CPU
A screenshot from Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro announcement video, showing a stylized processor against a dark background with glowing lines streaming from its edges
The AMD x Sony collab gave us FSR4 and a version will appear in PlayStation next year, too, having 'already started to implement the new neural network on PS5 Pro'
A screenshot from a YouTube video showing a sticker being pulled from the front of a fake 9800X3D CPU
This Amazon-bought fake AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is actually a 14-year-old Bulldozer chip with a cheap sticker on it
A close-up stylized photo of a silicon wafer, showing many small processor dies
Intel is still using TSMC for 30% of its wafer demands: 'We were talking about trying to get that to zero as quickly as possible. That's no longer the strategy'
Monster Hunter Wilds screen
Monster Hunter Wilds: Turns out updating drivers fixes brand new game. Again
Latest in News
GTA 5 characters
GTA 5 publisher takes legal aim at account-selling site for allegedly raking in 'millions in revenue', while recruiting hackers to keep its cogs turning
XFX Radeon RX 9070 XT Quicksilver graphics card on a blue background with angel wings on either side
XFX is letting you add customisable 3D printed wings to its Quicksilver RX 9070-series graphics cards
Marvel Rivals Human Torch
Marvel Rivals is carrying on the tradition of chaotic patches after buffing two of the most annoying heroes, but I main one of them, so I'm not complaining
 photo shows a factory tool that places lids on data center system-on-chips at an Intel fab in Chandler, Arizona, in December 2023. In February 2024, Intel Corporation launched Intel Foundry as the world’s first systems foundry for the AI era, delivering leadership in technology, resiliency and sustainability.
So, wait, now TSMC is supposedly pitching a joint venture with Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom to run Intel's ailing chip fabs?
Monster Hunter Wilds Artian weapon crafting - Gemma holding hot metal
Gemma's English VA is right with us on Monster Hunter Wild's confusing menus, which makes me feel a little better for having to Google symbols all the time
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT on a red and orange background
Some Sapphire RX 9070/9070 XT graphics cards have hard-to-spot foam inside that must be removed or it 'may result in a decrease in cooling capacity or product failure'