When tech giant Google (GOOGL) announced its quantum processor, the Willow, a seismic shock ran through the computing industry. While it was not obvious immediately, the potential was enough to rattle cages and get people thinking. Certainly, chip giant Intel (INTC) was in line for some of the fallout from that decision. But how can Intel respond to this? How can Intel preserve its markets in the face of a processor that might be strong enough to knock it out of the picture.
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What Intel Is Up Against
The early word about Willow is that it has a very real potential to alter the landscape for everything from finance to healthcare and well beyond. A report from Forbes illustrates the serious firepower that Willow represents: it can solve in just five minutes what the current top notch of supercomputers would take 10 septillion years to complete.
A septillion, for those not familiar, is a one followed by 27 zeroes. That’s a thousand sextillion, and trying to parse the numbers from there can get downright confusing. But the key takeaway is that a Willow is orders of magnitude more powerful than anything currently available.
And moreover, Willow does the job with an almost staggering level of accuracy, managing to get better the more it processes. And that makes it intensely better than just about anything out there.
What Intel Can Do
The good news on this front, however, is that practical applications for the Willow are still a long ways off. Quantum computing essentially just arrived, so actually getting it to the point where it could serve as anything more than a curiosity will take quite a while yet.
And this is where Intel actually has an opportunity to defuse Google’s lead before it has a potential to swamp the market and shut Intel out for good. One thing it could do immediately is recover from its losses. Intel has not been doing well in the last few months, and it needs to get back on track. While the new co-CEOs in charge of Intel are well on the way to turning things around, the current moves are doing little to address the potential threat that is quantum computing.
However, Intel is hardly sleeping on the quantum front. In fact, a CNET report revealed that Intel has had a dog in the hunt for quantum computing since June of 2023. That was when Intel rolled out a 12-qubit chip of its own. Known as Tunnel Falls, it represented an unusual step as Intel assembled its qubits from “individual electrons.”
But even back then, Intel was regarded as “lagging behind” in terms of quantum computing. Google had apparently been offering quantum computers for “years,” the report noted, and it was not alone therein. IBM (IBM) also had its own, as did some others. So while Intel does have a presence in this field, it is still somewhat behind. That is not a good position to be in, particularly for a company that needs to be near the forefront to keep market share out of competitors’ hands.
Ultimately, when you are talking about a chip that makes even Elon Musk say “Wow,” which he did on X, it is clearly a potential game changer. Intel has little hope here but to work on its own quantum development in a bid to potentially fend off Google.
Is Intel a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on INTC stock based on one Buy, 21 Holds and five Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 57.49% loss in its share price over the past year, the average INTC price target of $24.53 per share implies 22.34% upside potential.
