Intel launched Panther Lake, its new AI chip for ‌laptops, on Monday at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, ​as the company seeks to reassure investors about the first product made using its next-generation manufacturing process called 18A.

Jim Johnson, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s PC group, offered technical details about the company’s first line of Panther Lake chips known as Intel Core Ultra Series 3. The chips feature a new transistor design and a way to deliver power to the chip ​due to the company’s 18A manufacturing process.

At the event, Intel CEO ⁠Lip-Bu Tan said the company made good on its promise to ship its first products with the 18A manufacturing process in 2025, referring to the Panther Lake chips.

Intel’s prior-generation Lunar Lake chips were ​largely made by TSMC. The stakes ⁠for Intel are high; the company is making its first high-volume product with 18A, and hopes to reclaim market share it has lost to Advanced Micro Devices .

Johnson said the company has created a separate graphics chiplet: a mini ‌chip stitched together with other mini-chips to form a complete processor. ‌On Monday, Intel said the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips would deliver 60% better performance than the prior-generation Lunar Lake Series ‍2.

Intel plans to launch a platform for handheld video games based on the Panther Lake designs this year, Johnson said. Handheld PCs designed by a range of ‍suppliers have grown in popularity in recent years. Intel has struggled with the yield, or the number of good chips per silicon wafer, for the Panther Lake processors, Reuters reported last year. Intel executives have said its yields are improving monthly and will pave the way for the launch this year.

For its part, AMD plans to give a CES keynote address at 9:30 p.m. EST on Monday (0230 GMT on Tuesday). CEO Lisa Su will likely launch new generations of PC chips that ⁠are geared for AI and graphics. AMD announced a multibillion-dollar deal with OpenAI for its next-generation MI400 chips, some of which the companies ​plan to deploy this year.

The deal with the ChatGPT maker is expected to generate ⁠tens of billions of dollars in revenue for the chip designer. The CEO of AI chip leader Nvidia, Jensen Huang, also spoke at CES on Monday. He said the company’s next generation of chips was in “full production,” and they could deliver five times the artificial-intelligence computing of the company’s previous ⁠chips when serving up chatbots and other AI apps.

Intel on Thursday unveiled key details of its upcoming Panther Lake laptop processor, the first chip built on its next-generation 18A production process, aiming to convince investors its costly turnaround plan can restore its manufacturing edge.

The rollout of Panther Lake, aimed at high-end, artificial intelligence-enabled laptops, is a major test of Intel’s ability to scale its 18A manufacturing technology and reclaim PC market share lost to rival AMD.

Intel said graphics and central processors integrated in Panther Lake deliver 50% faster performance than its previous generation of chips, Lunar Lake, which was largely made by rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

The 18A process includes a new transistor design and a method of delivering energy to the chip more efficiently.

The Panther Lake uses a ‘system-on-chip’ design that usually integrates various components such as a graphic processor and a central processing unit on to a single circuit.

The processor will begin ramping up production this year, with the first unit slated to ship before 2025 end. It will be broadly available from January 2026.

Reuters had on Tuesday reported details about the chip’s specifications and availability.

“Panther Lake is extremely important to Intel on many different levels,” said Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at Technalysis Research.

It could serve as a “confirmation of the company’s continued advancements in semiconductor manufacturing and show the kind of chips that their fabs can produce”, he said.

New CEO Lip-Bu Tan has in the recent months sharply scaled back the massive manufacturing expansion pushed by his predecessor Pat Gelsinger. In July, Intel warned it would halt the development of its future 14A process unless it gets a customer.

After U.S. President Donald Trump called for Tan’s resignation in August, Intel drew new investments from SoftBank Group and Nvidia. Following Tan’s meeting with Trump and White House officials, the administration converted a planned CHIPS Act grant into a 9.9% equity stake in the company.

The new technologies “are catalysts for innovation across our business as we build a new Intel”, Tan said on Thursday.

The company’s chip manufacturing facility in Arizona, known as Fab 52, is now fully operational and set to reach high-volume production using 18A later this year.

Intel’s new server processor Clearwater Forest, which will be launched in the first half of 2026, is also being made at Fab 52.

While Intel has yet to gain traction in the AI graphics processor market dominated by Nvidia, it expects Clearwater Forest will help it grab a share in AI data centers thanks to its power efficiency.