Investing.com -- Intel shares climbed in premarket trading Wednesday after the company announced that its next-generation 18A-P manufacturing process has reached the risk production stage, a critical step before full-scale manufacturing begins.

The move signals that Intel is sticking to its manufacturing roadmap, a point the company hopes will reassure outside customers considering its foundry services.

Shares in the chipmaker rose around 4.5% in premarket trading by 05:12 ET (09:12 GMT).

Intel said 18A-P offers a 9% performance boost over the original 18A node at the same power level, or alternatively, an 18% reduction in power consumption at equivalent processing speeds.

The new process also brings improvements to thermal management and design flexibility. Because 18A-P shares the same design rules as 18A, chipmakers can carry over existing intellectual property and design workflows without starting from scratch.

The announcement comes amid a surge in demand for Intel’s processors from companies building AI infrastructure. Demand was strong enough in the first quarter that Intel ended up selling chips it had previously written off.

Earlier this month, Intel struck a partnership with Foxconn aimed at tackling infrastructure bottlenecks that have emerged as AI workloads scale rapidly, particularly as inference and agentic applications place new demands on data centers.

As part of that collaboration, the two companies said they would develop server racks combining Intel’s CPUs with its AI accelerator architecture, while also working on faster interconnects, system monitoring tools and improved cooling designs.

The partnership also extends beyond traditional data centers, with the companies targeting applications in robotics, autonomous vehicles, smart cities and manufacturing.