'Changing of the Guard'? AMD, Intel, and Micron Soar While Nvidia Lags (cnbc.com) 47
While Nvidia has dominated the "infrastructure boom" since 2022's launch of ChatGPT and "the generative AI craze," CNBC writes that "This week offered the starkest illustration yet of what MIzuho analyst Jordan Klein said could be a 'changing of the guard in AI.'"
Chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Intel notched gains of about 25%, while memory maker Micron jumped more than 37% and fiber-optic cable maker Corning climbed about 18%. All four of those companies have more than doubled in value this year, with Intel leading the way, up well over 200%. Nvidia, meanwhile, is only slightly ahead of the Nasdaq in 2026, gaining 15% for the year, aided by an 8% rally this week. In spreading the wealth to a wider swath of hardware companies, investors are clearly betting that the bull market in AI has long legs and that data centers are going to need a wider array of advanced components for years to come.
Memory has been the biggest theme of late due to a global shortage that's driven up prices and turned Micron, a 47-year-old company tucked in a sleepy corner of the semiconductor market, into one of the hottest trades over the past 12 months. Micron blew past an $800 billion market capitalization for the first time this week, and the stock is now up over 750% in the past year. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told CNBC in March that key customers are only getting "50% to two-thirds of their requirements" because of supply issues. The memory market is largely dominated by Micron, along with Korea-based Samsung and SK Hynix, which are also both in the midst of historic rallies...
Bank of America estimates the data center CPU market could more than double from $27 billion in 2025 to $60 billion in 2030. AMD's quarterly results this week underscored the emerging trend, as earnings, revenue and guidance sailed past estimates on strong data center growth. The company has long led the CPU charge, and CEO Lisa Su said on the earnings call that AMD now expects 35% growth over the next three to five years in the server CPU market, up from a forecast of 18% growth that the company provided in November.
The article cites two other big movers:
Memory has been the biggest theme of late due to a global shortage that's driven up prices and turned Micron, a 47-year-old company tucked in a sleepy corner of the semiconductor market, into one of the hottest trades over the past 12 months. Micron blew past an $800 billion market capitalization for the first time this week, and the stock is now up over 750% in the past year. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told CNBC in March that key customers are only getting "50% to two-thirds of their requirements" because of supply issues. The memory market is largely dominated by Micron, along with Korea-based Samsung and SK Hynix, which are also both in the midst of historic rallies...
Bank of America estimates the data center CPU market could more than double from $27 billion in 2025 to $60 billion in 2030. AMD's quarterly results this week underscored the emerging trend, as earnings, revenue and guidance sailed past estimates on strong data center growth. The company has long led the CPU charge, and CEO Lisa Su said on the earnings call that AMD now expects 35% growth over the next three to five years in the server CPU market, up from a forecast of 18% growth that the company provided in November.
The article cites two other big movers:
- Intel "is in the midst of a revival sparked by a major investment from the U.S. government last year. Intel's stock had its best month on record in April, more than doubling, and has continued notching massive gains, rising 33% in the early days of May."
- Nvidia still remains the world's most valuable company "and is expected to show revenue growth of 70% this fiscal year," the article points out — adding that companies like Corning are also benefiting from Nvidia partnerships. "Glass maker Corning, which celebrated its 175th anniversary this week, signed a massive deal with Nvidia on Wednesday that involves the development of three new U.S. factories dedicated entirely to optical technologies... likely a major step in Nvidia's move away from copper cables and towards fiber-optic cables as it builds out its rack-scale systems."
Smaller companies can easily show bigger % gains (Score:5, Insightful)
When you're the giant of the industry, as NVidia is, you can't keep increasing by triple digits every year. If you're smaller, those bigger percentages are easier to achieve, even if the absolute numbers aren't as big.
Re: Smaller companies can easily show bigger % gai (Score:2)
That's largely irrelevant to an investor. You are limited by your own investment value, not by market cap. Intel is up 450% in the last year. Nvidia is up 70%. Intel was a much better investment a year ago than Nvidia.
Now? Perhaps not so much. But smart money invested in Intel after the drop to $20. That's what my household did. We sold it yesterday.
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I think Tony Isaac's point is a company that is already very big cannot get a lot bigger without getting smaller first.
Intel is a good example of that. Its stock-price had a big rise up to mid-2000 until the dot-com bubble burst. Then it fell by a factor of two. For about a decade and a half it did pretty much nothing, then rose to challenge its 2000 high starting in early 2020. Then it fell again, reaching early-2010s levels last year. And then suddenly it had a spike upwards in the past year or so, fed by
Reading between the lines. (Score:2)
When you're the giant of the industry, as NVidia is, you can't keep increasing by triple digits every year. If you're smaller, those bigger percentages are easier to achieve, even if the absolute numbers aren't as big.
I’m betting during the boom of the gold rush there wasn’t any pickaxe vendor lagging behind in sales. Not even the biggest ones.
If the AI boom is in fact still a boom, then I’d still expect large returns.
Investors should enjoy that bubble while the gum of marketing holds on for dear life.
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You're assuming every pickaxe is the same, it's not. NVIDIA's pickaxe was bigger, sharper and lasted longer at the start of the rush which is why everyone preferred their pickaxe and only went to the competition if they couldn't get the bigger better pickaxe. That dynamic is slowly changing as the laggards are catching up.
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Iâ(TM)m betting during the boom of the gold rush there wasnâ(TM)t any pickaxe vendor lagging behind in sales. Not even the biggest ones.
It isn't. They are doing very, very well with stock nearly doubling in a year. That's mad crazy levels of growth. But they're doing incredibly well from a solid base. Intel spent a decade fucking up so they're a long way down which means they have higher to climb.
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Yes, and even NVidia, the biggest one, gained 15% according to the article. That's not a small gain, for a big company. But it's not really "falling behind" the smaller companies either, just because their percentages are bigger.
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Oh good. It sounds like you're a smart investor. I'd like to tell you about my company. It grew by 10,000% last year. If you invest just one thousand dollars our market cap is guaranteed to grow by another 10,000% this year! Guaranteed! It's the investment of a lifetime!
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Ah, another smart investor! May I point out that 10,000% is much more than 50%?
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When you're the giant of the industry, as NVidia is, you can't keep increasing by triple digits every year. If you're smaller, those bigger percentages are easier to achieve, even if the absolute numbers aren't as big.
Nvidia is lagging its competitors with respect to stock price appreciation. However, it's still outperforming its competitors in revenue, margin, and future demand. While Nvidia's growth has indeed slowed down, it still is growing faster than Intel or AMD, either looking at percentage or dollar growth. Intel's sales are flat. While AMD's sales are growing by about 40% over the last year, Nvidia's sales have grown by 65%, despite being much larger to start with. AMD's PE ratio is now an astounding 151
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Mod parent insightful.
Show me the money (profit) (Score:2)
Intel is improving for sure, as is AMD and Micron. Nvidia though is still just a rockstar on all levels. Happy to hold and aquire a "laggard" like Nvidia...
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Nvidia has risen dramatically over the past decade or so because it found a crossover market for its video chips, specifically in high-performanced computing, cryptocurrency, and more recently AI-training. I think its stock-price will keep rising as long as it keeps innovating or it finds new markets, and its customers don't find alternatives. However, it has suffered a few pullbacks over the years, so it's not a buy-and-forget stock.
Re: Show me the money (profit) (Score:2)
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I think Nvidia became big because Cuda is used so much. But ai companies run their own data centres, can use whatever chip design and send it themselves to TSMC. They have no need to pay Nvidia.
I suspect you underestimate what it takes to design a chip. AI companies can't afford to focus any part of their business on that effort, because it's way too involved.
If AI companies use bespoke designs for chips, they're not designed and taped-out in-house. They would hire another company to do it for them. At which point it's pretty much the same as buying off-the-shelf, because many chip-makers are catering to AI clients already.
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These are the first google results when I search for the AI chips of these companies. Then there are also wafer-scale chips
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Thanks for the info. I was aware of Google's TPUs but I wasn't aware they were so widespread. As for the others, well apparently my understanding is out-of-date.
In any case, the actual layout and timing-studies for a new chip strike me as being far too involved for an AI company that wants to concentrate on other things, like curating data and training models with it. Surely they must have outside help -- lots of it.
Up 10x since 2022 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Up 10x since 2022 (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. NVDA is up 75% from one year ago - not exactly the stock market laggard the article makes it out ot be. Even though a few other stocks did better.
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"They are stock is" what?
Anyway, the crash is going to be a doozy, isn't it? What do you think, later this year?
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but there isn't going to be any AI bubble-bursting event for a while to come.
If anything, more companies are jumping on and finding intriguing and amazing [slashdot.org] uses for AI such as in the medicine and surgical space, whether using reasoning models or image/video/audio generation.
I may not agree with AI, but sadly it's looking more and more like the future behind everything, and many of us will sadly, soon find ourselves as reviewers/testers in organisations powered by AI.
As huggingface [huggingface.co]
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If anything, more companies are jumping on and finding intriguing and amazing uses for AI
Of course, but Wall Street over inflates the scientific and engineering progress. Buys with a little too much "fear of missing out" behind them.
Win11 ARM CPUs could keep it going up (Score:1)
"They are stock is" what?
Doh :-)
Anyway, the crash is going to be a doozy, isn't it? What do you think, later this year?
I'm expecting an ARM based PC CPU announcement from them, integrating their GPU designs, toss in some AI/ML acceleration. Sort of their spin on Apple Silicon. As MS' exclusive contract with Qualcomm ends, they might be well positioned as a major Win11 ARM CPU vendor. That could provide some offset to AI based corrections. Rumors of chips named N1, N2, ... Rumors of deals with Dell, Lenovo, ... If all this starts looking more real and less vapor, it could be big.
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Are you talking about this? [forbes.com]: "Jensen Huang promised “several new chips the world has never seen before” at GTC 2026, which opens today in San Jose (March 16-19). The most anticipated: the N1X, an Arm-based system-on-chip developed with MediaTek that integrates CPU, GPU, and NPU into a single package. Leaked Lenovo support pages and Dell shipping manifests confirm at least eight laptop models in development, spanning IdeaPads, Yoga Pro 7, Legion gaming systems, Dell XPS, and Alienware."
Not anno
Re:Up 10x since 2022 (Score:4)
Here's the thing, if Nvidia was any other company you wouldn't be able to buy the stock for any price. Their numbers keep blowing past even optimistic estimates, their growth keeps climbing, and they can't make their products fast enough. All of this as the (current) industry behemoth in GPUs They even recently announced getting into the quantum side of things.
Will this last forever? No, of course not. No one can. But at the moment there doesn't appear to be a ceiling for them. And yet, every time they release earnings their stock gets dumped becasue people believe this is the time they've hit their peak. When the companies making the chips say they have orders filled through 2027, what would make people think Nvidia has hit is peak?
Nvidia should be at or near $300/share at this point. It's only because of whiny "investors" it's not. When they report on the 20th they will again blow past everything and once again we'll watch them get penalized for doing so.
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> what would make people think Nvidia has hit is peak?
Because it's clearly an unsustainable bubble and Nvidia's only real magic sauce is CUDA?
When China starts churning out cheap AI chips and convinces devs to get off CUDA and onto some new standard, Nvidia's share price will fall through the floor. Particularly as they've caused so much damage to their traditional buyers in the gaming market, who can no longer afford to buy new PCs because of the AI Bubble. We're not going to forget that.
> Nvidia sho
Engineering progress still gets inflated by FOMO (Score:1)
Personally I think in the short term an announcement of ARM based CPU/GPU/NPU chips for the Win 11 ARM market could offset or delay a correction.
Woot? (Score:3)
Nvidia dominated long before 2022!
So... (Score:3)
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Myself I'm looking forward to building my shack in the local slumtown out of discarded H200 modules.
Normal rotation (Score:3)
It looks like a normal in-sector rotation to me. Nvidia moved first, now the others in the space are following.
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People don't know the difference between exponential growth and a logistic curve.
The smart money ... (Score:2)
That's not always the case in the event these lower tier suppliers can't handle the demand surge.
Why is Intel stock zooming? (Score:2)
Really curious - what exactly has Intel done to rise so much? Just last year everyone was blaming Intel and that they are doomed to be laggards. I can understand Micron growing - for all AIs need huge RAM. But what about Intel? What are they suddenly manufacturing now that is so much in demand that the stock have zoomed?
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Someone realized that Intel still makes half of the CPUs on Earth.
Re: Why is Intel stock zooming? (Score:2)
No way they make half of them.
The vast majority of CPUs are ARM, and Intel isn't making many of them.
The reason Intel stayed flat (market cap) even as they pounded AMD in the bulldozer era is that they were also becoming a niche part of the CPU market.
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I should have said PC and server CPUs. ARM dominates mobile and embedded of course. It's not a market Intel has ever been a significant player in though.
Yeah, this is the impression you'd get, reading Slashdot at least. There's a good chance you typed out your message on a "niche part of the CPU market," and you definitely used several to send it.
Lags? (Score:2)
yes and no (Score:2)
The market IS white hot right now, but the Hormuz hit is just starting to land. Demand at the edges is what sets the price - if all southeast Asian gamers are spending the GPU money on gas, that cools the rush. And I have no confidence any of these datacenter announcements are going to lead to actual builds. Companies talked a great game, but the political heat is on, the electric and water constraints are real, and advances like TurboQuant, which conservatively speaking offers a 4x boost to existing GPUs .