Intel (INTC.O) announced its third-quarter performance report, which showed thatNet profit in the third quarter was US$297 million, compared with US$1 billion in the same period last year. Earnings per share in the third quarter were 7 cents, compared with 25 cents in the same period last year. Adjusted earnings per share were 41 cents, down from 59 cents per share in the same period last year.

Additionally, third-quarter revenue fell to $14.2 billion from $15.3 billion, compared with FactSet's estimate of $13.6 billion.

Intel's third-quarter PC business revenue fell 3% to $7.9 billion, better than analysts' expectations of $7.3 billion. Data center and artificial intelligence revenue fell 10% to $3.8 billion, just below the FactSet consensus of $3.9 billion.

Intel's adjusted gross margin was 45.8%, compared with 39.8% in the second quarter.

At the same time, the company also gave forward guidance for the fourth quarter, expecting fourth-quarter revenue to be US$14.6 billion to US$15.6 billion, while analysts expected US$14.4 billion. The company also forecast fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 44 cents per share, also better than analysts' expectations of 33 cents. Company CEO Pat Gelsinger said when talking about the financial report:

"While the industry has seen some changes in market share between CPUs and accelerators over the past few quarters, and some inventory consumption in the server market, entering the fourth quarter we are seeing signs of normalization."

As artificial intelligence becomes more dominant in technology, Gelsinger is confident about Intel's positioning and the future of central processing units. He said,

"The training of these large models is interesting, but we think the deployment and inference use of these models is what's going to be really amazing in the future, and ... some of that will be running on accelerators, but a lot of it will be running on Xeons."

He also revealed that Intel currently has three customers that have made commitments to its 18A foundry process technology. The company previously revealed that one customer had made an advance payment, but Gelsinger added on Thursday that Intel has two other customers.

"The other thing we saw this quarter that was a little bit unexpected was a huge spike in interest from AI customers and Intel's advanced packaging technology."

Intel is currently pushing hard to build a foundry business through which it will produce chips for other companies, although Wall Street is not entirely optimistic about this move.