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What happened: Semiconductor stocks rose on Thursday. Qualcomm (QCOM) surged 9% in early trading, while Broadcom (AVGO), and AMD (AMD) climbed higher as well. Memory and storage players Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital (WDC), and Seagate (STX) also rose.
What’s behind the move: Big Tech earnings from companies like Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) showed hyperscalers plan to grow their capital expenditures on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Wall Street sees chip infrastructure players needed for AI data centers as beneficieraes of the AI trade. Meta and Microsoft on Wednesday called out rising costs for data center components such as memory chips. The cost of memory and data storage has risen, benefiting companies like Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital (WDC), and Seagate (STX), which posted strong results .
Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s better-than-expected first quarter results also lifted the broader chip sector. The company said it expects to ship custom silicon to an unnamed hyperscaler later this year.
The maker of smartphone processors said it sees the market for Chinese phones bottoming in the current quarter. Earlier this week Qualcomm shares surged after tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TF International Securities said that OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) is working with the company to develop smartphone processors.
What else you need to know: Semiconductor stocks have been on fire in recent weeks amid investors’ growing focus on agentic AI, in which bots or agents act on users’ behalf.
Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre.
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