Jim Cramer: This third-best S&P 500 stock in 2026 can jump another 40%

Here is a story making headlines in the economy: "Intel is going to $200 like a rocket ship. " That is what Jim Cramer said about this favorite Club stock on CNBC on Tuesday morning. 8% gain on the session, Intel was trading above its record-high close of $140.

95 per share from June 22. On this final day of the first half of the year, Intel is already the third-best S & P 500 performer in 2026, with a gain of nearly 285%. Going to $200 per share would be roughly 40% higher than current levels.

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While keeping his "own it, don't trade it" designation on Club stalwart Nvidia , Jim likes Intel better because its central processing units (CPUs) are now a hot artificial intelligence commodity. AI computing is shifting from training to inference, especially for agentic AI systems capable of completing tasks autonomously. Training large language models (LLMs) needs the power of Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) — and increasingly, competing custom chips.

But the day-to-day use of agentic systems requires a lot of CPUs to complete tasks. "CPUs are worth a fortune," Jim said during Tuesday's Morning Meeting . "They're better, they're more valuable than GPUs" in the agentic era.

To be sure, Nvidia has gotten into CPUs, leaning on Arm Holdings ' chip architecture. However, Intel — and Advanced Micro Devices for that matter — have been at it for much longer. AMD is up 170% year to date.

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Club name Arm, which makes money on royalties from its technology and is launching its own chip, is up nearly 230% in 2026. Intel's chip manufacturing business is also giving the company an edge. Jim said Intel's foundry could be a major solution to the industry's production capacity shortages, and to President Donald Trump 's desire to bring advanced semiconductor manufacturing to the U.

Since taking over Intel in March 2025, CEO Lip-Bu Tan has made revitalizing the company's once-lagging foundry business a top priority. It is viewed as a national treasure by the White House. On June 18, Trump said Intel had agreed to a deal with Apple to design and build chips in the U.

Neither company confirmed it . Apple's chips are made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's dominant foundry. TSMC, a rival to Intel, is building up a presence in the U.

Financial markets are tracking the development closely as investors assess the likely impact.