What happened: Semiconductor stocks rose on Thursday. Qualcomm (QCOM) rose 9% in pre-market trading, while peers Broadcom (AVGO), Intel (INTC), and AMD (AMD) also rose higher.
What’s behind the measure: Big tech earnings from companies like Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) showed that hyperscalers plan to increase their capital expenditures on AI infrastructure.
Wall Street sees makers of the central processing units (CPUs) needed for agent AI, such as Intel and AMD, as beneficiaries of the trade. The cost of memory and data storage has also benefited players like Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital (WDC), and Seagate (STX), which rallied premarket following Seagate’s strong results.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s better-than-expected first-quarter results also boosted the broader chip sector. The smartphone processor maker said it sees the Chinese phone market hitting bottom in the current quarter, a positive sign for the company. It also said it hopes to ship custom silicon to an unnamed hyperscaler later this year.
What else do you need to know? Semiconductor stocks have been booming in recent weeks amid increasing investor focus on agent AI, in which bots or agents act on behalf of users.
This week, Qualcomm rose about 15% after tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities said OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) is working with Qualcomm to develop smartphone processors.
Inés Ferré is a senior business reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X in @ines_ferre.
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