Intel is reportedly preparing to raise CPU prices by 10% ahead of its March 2027 product launch, with AMD expected to follow suit mid-year.

Intel is reportedly preparing to raise CPU prices by 10%, according to a new Digitimes report. Citing supply chain sources, the outlet states that this increase follows two prior hikes—one in the first quarter of 2026 and another in July—applied to select server and client processors. While the report does not specify which exact products will see the price adjustment, industry sources suggest the changes will likely roll out through Intel’s mobile and server divisions before reaching the desktop client segment.

These pricing adjustments align with Intel’s broader strategy to improve gross margins amid a contracting PC market. During its most recent earnings call in July, Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner explicitly noted that a 13% year-over-year increase in the company’s client revenue was driven by higher average selling prices rather than increased sales volume. Although the specific affected products remain unconfirmed, server and mobile segments appear to be the primary targets. Intel’s upcoming Panther Lake architecture mandates high-speed LPDDR5X-7467 memory as a baseline, while last-generation Lunar Lake CPUs feature on-package memory. Consequently, rising memory costs place greater financial pressure on fully integrated systems like laptops compared to socketed, standalone desktop processors.

On the server side, unprecedented demand driven by agentic AI workloads has fueled consecutive record highs in Intel’s share price, even without major product announcements. Earlier this year, Wall Street projected the server CPU market would grow from approximately $30 billion today to around $120 billion by 2030; those forecasts have since been revised upward to as high as $220 billion. According to the report, Intel is scheduled to launch its “major annual products” in March 2027, with AMD expected to follow suit with its own releases between June and July. This timeline corroborates a recently leaked Intel roadmap indicating that next-generation Nova Lake desktop CPUs will enter mass production in Q4 2026, with a commercial release in Q1 2027. While rumor mills have suggested an early Q1 debut for Nova Lake, the Digitimes article does not specify which particular product Intel will unveil in March. For context, Intel previously launched its Xeon 600 series for the high-end desktop (HEDT) market in March of this year.

Perhaps more notable is the projected AMD launch window. It is already known that AMD will introduce Venice-X in the second half of 2027—a Zen 6 server processor featuring 3D V-Cache with up to 1,152 MB of L3 cache per chip. The June-to-July timeframe likely points toward AMD’s next-generation desktop CPUs built on the Zen 6 architecture, codenamed Olympic Ridge. AMD officially launched its initial Venice server CPUs earlier this year, marking the debut of the Zen 6 architecture. However, there has been no official announcement regarding Zen 6 for the desktop space, which is unusual given AMD’s recent release patterns. Historically, there has been roughly a two-year gap between Zen 3 and Zen 4, as well as Zen 4 and Zen 5, on the desktop platform. With just over two years having passed since Zen 5’s launch, a similar cadence would typically suggest an announcement sooner than mid-2027. Nevertheless, the same explosive server CPU demand may have altered AMD’s development schedule, making a June or July launch for Olympic Ridge entirely plausible.