You can say what you want about AMD, but they surely ignited a more-core race with Intel. In newly leaked slides from  the PC EVA forums you can spots products tagged as Ghost Canyon X NUC systems. 

The products are to launch in 2019 and will offer a diverse selection of procs for the tiny NUC platform. The most striking entry is a 45W 8 core / 16 threaded i9-9xxxH (highlighted in black on the slides).

But also there will be a 45W 6 core / 12 threads  i7-9xxxH, and 45W 4 core / 8 threads i5-9xxxH. The three procs will get UHD graphics and the 6- and 8-core part will offer a full PCIe X16 slot or at least the lanes for it. The units can house two M.2 units and can support up to 8x USB ports, two Thunderbolt 3. Connectivity for displays will be x HDMI 2.0a ports. It features two memory slots with support DDR4 2400/2666 memory up to 64 GB maximum, we do hope that is dual-channel.  Have a peek at the slides.

Slides Show Intel Ghost Canyon X NUC Could Have 8-Core 16-Thread CPU