Research|INTC: Muse Drives CPU Demand and Price Hikes Expand Upside; Foundry Execution on Track

Based on the case study library from our recently published META report, Meta Muse handles a substantial volume of high-frequency tasks, such as cross-platform price comparisons (e.g., up to 146 searches for a single travel itinerary), processing massive email backlogs, and automated phone negotiations. Because Meta proactively provisions persistent cloud-based execution environments for user agents, relying on headless browser automation and high-frequency API orchestration, the compute workload shifts heavily back to the CPU. If Muse reaches broad penetration across Meta's social ecosystem, it will create substantial server CPU demand, keeping supply tight and supporting price hikes.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan also noted that, driven by AI inference, the spread of agentic architectures, and a general-purpose compute refresh cycle, current CPU demand far outstrips capacity, and the company can fulfill only ~50% of customer orders. This pronounced supply-demand gap grants the company strong pricing power: Intel is expected to raise PC CPU prices by ~10% in October, and our channel checks indicate server CPUs will also undergo another round of price hikes of at least 15% in 26Q4.