(Reuters) – Intel will lose its spot in the Dow Jones Industrial Average after a 25-year run to Nvidia, S&P Dow Jones Indices said on Friday, the latest blow to the struggling chipmaker that was among the first two technology firms to be included in the blue-chip index.
Once the dominant force in chipmaking, Intel has in recent years ceded its manufacturing edge to rival TSMC and missed out on the generative artificial intelligence boom after missteps including passing on an investment in ChatGPT-owner OpenAI.
Intel’s shares have declined 54% this year, making it the worst performer on the index and leaving it with the lowest stock price on the price-weighted Dow.
The stock fell about 1% in extended trading on Friday, while Nvidia was up 1.5%.
Launched in 1968, the Silicon Valley pioneer sold memory chips before switching to processors that helped launch the personal computer industry.
In the 1990s, “Intel Inside” stickers turned commodity electronic components into premium products, and eventually became ubiquitous on laptops.
Nvidia has emerged as a cornerstone of the global semiconductor industry, thanks to the essential role its chips play in powering generative AI technologies which has driven a seven-fold surge in its shares over the past two years.
The company’s shares have risen more than two-fold this year alone.
Once popular only among gamers who hunted for PCs with Nvidia’s graphics processors, the company is now the second-most valuable in the world and is seen as a barometer for the AI market.
The company’s 10-for-one stock split that took effect in June also helped pave the way for its addition to the index, making its soaring shares more accessible to retail traders. (This story has been corrected to say that Intel shares fell, not rose, in paragraph 4)
(Reporting by Akash Sriram and Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
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