Micron closed Thursday at $991.64, up 4.52%, after announcing it is expanding its U.S. manufacturing and R&D commitment to $250 billion by 2035 — up from $200 billion announced in June. The move accompanies blockbuster Q3 results of $41.5 billion in revenue (up 346% year over year) and Q4 guidance of $50 billion. The company also disclosed a $3 billion investment in GlobalWafers' Texas silicon wafer operations.
Meta shares rose nearly 5% Thursday after the company confirmed it will begin manufacturing a proprietary AI chip — developed with Broadcom, fabbed by TSMC — starting in September, targeting 14 gigawatts of total compute capacity by 2027. Deutsche Bank estimates the move could slash Meta's datacenter costs by up to 35% in 2027. Separately, Meta unveiled Muse Spark 1.1, its strongest model yet for agentic and coding tasks, with a public developer preview now live.
Apple confirmed a multiyear agreement with Broadcom exceeding $30 billion to design and produce custom radio frequency components and wireless connectivity chips for Apple devices, with production centered at Broadcom's Fort Collins, Colorado facility. The deal extends through 2031, dispelling fears that Apple's in-house silicon push would eventually displace Broadcom. Shares closed at $388.69, up 4.83%, against a consensus analyst price target of $523.
Super Micro Computer posted the session's biggest single-day gain at 7.31%, closing at $28.17 on heavy volume, after launching validated Kubernetes Edge AI appliances built in partnership with Red Hat and Everpure. The product targets on-premise AI inference deployments as a turnkey solution. Context: SMCI is still down approximately 36% over the past 30 days under regulatory scrutiny of its Taiwan operations, making this a relief bounce worth watching closely.
Citi raised its TSMC price target ahead of the company's July 16 Q2 earnings report, expecting management to lift its full-year 2026 revenue growth forecast above 30%. Analysts consensus is calling for $40 billion in Q2 revenue — up from $30 billion a year ago — with gross margins expected between 65.5% and 67.5%. Investors will be watching for CoWoS advanced packaging capacity updates and pricing commentary on 3nm and 2nm nodes.
DA Davidson upgraded Palantir to Buy with a $175 price target, citing that "Palantir's valuation is the most attractive it has been in a while, especially relative to high-growth software peers." The upgrade arrives on the heels of a record Q1 — revenue up 84.7% year over year, U.S. commercial revenue up 133% — plus a new NVIDIA partnership focused on government and security-sensitive AI deployments. Palantir previously surged 9% on July 1 after Trump disclosed a $1M+ personal stake.
NVIDIA is drawing renewed analyst attention after pulling back sharply in June, now sitting roughly 35-50% below consensus price targets. The stock is at approximately $198 against an analyst consensus target of $301.62 across 58 buy-rated analysts. AI-related revenues continue to accelerate, and the June pullback has brought the P/E to roughly 30 — a level the analyst community views as an attractive entry relative to the company's growth trajectory.
Anthropic, not yet publicly traded, filed confidentially for an IPO in June 2026 and is tracking toward a late-2026 listing at a reported $965 billion valuation. Its revenue run rate has reached $47 billion, and it led global LLM revenue share in Q1 at 31.4%, narrowly ahead of OpenAI at 29%. OpenAI also filed confidentially but may push its listing to 2027 following SpaceX's rocky debut. These private-market valuations are actively benchmarking public AI names and shaping sector sentiment.
Advanced Micro Devices has surged approximately 150% year to date — a dramatic outperformance relative to NVIDIA's more modest 13% gain over the same period. The MI300 series has established AMD as a credible AI accelerator challenger, with OpenAI and Oracle both signing on as strategic partners. NVIDIA retains 70-80% AI chip market share, but AMD is closing the narrative gap and attracting capital rotation from investors seeking relative value in AI semis.
U.S. equity markets closed solidly higher Thursday as the AI trade reasserted itself. The Nasdaq Composite rose 1.3% to 26,206.89; the S&P 500 gained 0.8% to 7,543.64; and the Dow added 0.3% to 52,478.41. Chip and AI-infrastructure names led gains across the board, with markets brushing aside ongoing Middle East tensions to close out a strong week for the sector.
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