Hopefully, Nova Lake will be worth every cent.
It should come as no surprise that the biggest chip companies in the world spend billions of dollars every year on research and development. To stay ahead of the competition and improve revenues, new architectures, systems, and software stacks need to be designed, built, and tested. What might raise a few eyebrows is just how much money Intel spent last year on R&D, especially compared to AMD, Nvidia, and the rest of the semiconductor world.
An analysis of research and development expenditure by TechInsights was reported by Korea JoongAng Daily, but you can get the numbers yourself by pulling up each company’s 2024 financial results. For example, AMD declared that it spent $6.456 billion last year (pdf, page 1) on R&D, whereas Nvidia forked out $12.914 billion. It’s worth noting that Nvidia’s financial statements are numbered one year ahead of the actual period (FY 2026 is 2025 and so on).
Anyway, those figures pale in comparison to how much cash Intel burned through in 2024 to research and develop chip, fabrication technologies, software, and all kinds of tech stuff—a staggering $16.546 billion (pdf, page 25). That’s 28% more than Nvidia and a frankly unbelievable 156% more than AMD.
The nearest non-US semiconductor firm is Samsung Electronics, which spent a reported $9.
