Intel (INTC) stock jumped more than 9% on Wednesday after the company said it is repurchasing an equity stake in one of its chip plants in Ireland from Apollo (APO).

The news is a welcome sign that Intel, which continues its turnaround effort, is getting on a more stable financial footing.

The chipmaker will repurchase the 49% stake in the fabrication facility it sold to Apollo for $11.2 billion in 2024 for $14.2 billion, the company said in a statement. (Disclosure: Yahoo is a portfolio company of funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management.)

“Our 2024 agreement was the right structure at the right time and provided Intel with meaningful flexibility, enabling us to accelerate critical initiatives,” Intel CFO David Zinsner said.

“Today, we have a stronger balance sheet, improved financial discipline and an evolved business strategy,” he said. “We appreciate Apollo’s continued collaboration to reach this outcome as we realign our capital structure with our long-term strategy.”

Read more about Intel's stock moves and today's market action.

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger sold the equity stake in the Ireland facility at a time when the company needed to shore up its finances, as it looked to regain a leadership position in chip development and manufacturing technologies that it ceded to rivals AMD (AMD) and TSMC (TSM).

Intel’s revenue declined 20% year over year in 2022, 14% in 2023, 2% in 2024, and 0.47% last year.

Intel has largely missed out on the AI explosion that catapulted Nvidia (NVDA) to become the largest publicly traded company on the planet due to Intel’s lack of meaningful graphics chip technology.

But the tide seems to be turning in Intel’s direction. As agentic AI — AI bots that can perform tasks on a user’s behalf — gains momentum, central processing units (CPUs) are becoming increasingly important for data center builders and hyperscalers.

Intel has also successfully launched its long-delayed 18A chip technology, which promises performance and battery life akin to Apple’s (AAPL) Arm-based M-series chips.

Intel has also received significant backing from both the Trump administration, which purchased a 10% stake in the company in August, and Nvidia, which purchased $5 billion worth of the company’s stock in September.

The move to CPUs in AI data centers and Intel’s improved chip technology could finally help the company return to growth, with investors expecting revenue to increase 2% year over year by the end of 2026.

But AMD chips are also in high demand in the data center for agentic AI workloads. And Nvidia has begun rolling out its own CPU servers to power AI services. Arm, which traditionally licenses chip designs to the likes of Apple and Nvidia, is getting in on the action with its first production CPU.

Still, the moment for Intel appears to be moving in the right direction. At least for now.

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Pat Gelsinger. We regret the error.

Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

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