The AI market trend has spread from NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) to the entire hardware industry chain, with Intel Corporation (INTC.US) and Micron Technology, Inc. (MU.US) stock prices doubling within the year.

Since the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, the generative AI trend has started, and NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) has been the biggest winner in the AI infrastructure investment wave. However, as the AI industry chain continues to expand, Wall Street funds are beginning to flow to more hardware companies that were previously not the focus of the market. This week, the "diffusion rally" in the AI industry chain has further heated up. The stock prices of American companies such as AMD.US and Intel Corporation (INTC.US) have risen by about 25%, while storage chip giant Micron Technology, Inc. (MU.US) has soared by over 37%, and fiber materials manufacturer Corning Inc (GLW.US) has also risen by about 18%. The stock prices of the four companies mentioned above have doubled so far this year, with Intel Corporation seeing an increase of over 200%. In contrast, NVIDIA Corporation has seen a 15% increase this year, only slightly higher than the performance of the NASDAQ index. Mizuho analyst Jordan Klein said that this may indicate a "power shift in the AI field". The market is increasingly believing that the construction of AI infrastructure is not a short-term trend, and data centers will continue to need more types of advanced hardware components in the coming years. Among them, storage chips have become one of the hottest topics recently. The global shortage of storage chips has driven prices continuously upward, making Micron Technology, Inc., which has been established for 47 years, one of the hottest trades in the market. The company's market value surpassed $800 billion for the first time this week, with the stock price rising more than 750% in the past year. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra previously stated that due to limited supply, core customers can currently only obtain "50% to two-thirds" of the required storage chips. At the same time, the AI trend has reignited the market's attention to CPUs. In the past few years, with tech giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOG.US, GOOGL.US), Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US), and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) making large-scale purchases of GPUs, CPUs were once marginalized in the market. However, as the AI development direction gradually shifts from chatbots to AI intelligent agents, CPU demand is rapidly increasing. Bank of America Corp predicts that the data center CPU market will grow from $27 billion in 2025 to over $60 billion in 2030. The financial report released by AMD this week further strengthens this trend. The company's revenue, profit, and performance guidance all exceeded market expectations, with strong growth in the data center business. AMD CEO Dr. Su Tseng-Chang said the company is currently expecting a 35% annual growth rate in the server CPU market over the next 3 to 5 years, significantly higher than the 18% forecast given last November. Su Tseng-Chang said, "AI intelligent agents are driving a huge demand cycle for the entire AI application, and we are very excited about it." Wall Street institutions subsequently upgraded the rating of AMD. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. and Bernstein both upgraded AMD to "buy," believing that CPU demand is experiencing long-term structural opportunities. On the other hand, Intel Corporation, which had long been a leader in the CPU market but missed out on the AI wave, is now experiencing a revival. The massive investment by the U.S. government last year was a turning point for the company. Intel Corporation's stock had its best single month performance in April, with a monthly increase of over 100%, and continued to rise strongly in early May. The market is also paying attention to the potential cooperation between Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) and Intel Corporation. According to media reports, Apple Inc. is in discussions with Intel Corporation and Samsung to have the latter manufacture chips for the U.S. market. In addition to the chip sector, the construction of AI infrastructure is also driving a boom in the optical communication industry. Corning Inc announced a major cooperation agreement with NVIDIA Corporation this week to build three U.S. factories that will specialize in producing optical technology products required for AI systems. According to the agreement, NVIDIA Corporation can invest up to $3.2 billion in Corning Inc in the future. This is also seen as an important signal that NVIDIA Corporation is gradually transitioning from traditional copper cable to fiber optic interconnect. NVIDIA Corporation CEO Jensen Huang said, "We are expanding our optical communication business on an unprecedented scale." He stated that the global economy is currently undergoing "the largest infrastructure construction wave in human history." However, some analysts have begun to be cautious about the overheating risks in the AI sector. BTIG analyst Jonathan Krinsky said that the current semiconductor sector rally is highly similar to the Internet bubble period in 1999, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rising by 66% this year and potentially facing a 25% to 30% correction in the future.