J.P. Morgan lifted its year-end S&P 500 target from 7,800 to 8,000 this morning, raising its 2026 EPS forecast to $365 and its 2027 estimate to $420. The catalyst: 85.1% of reporting S&P companies have beaten expectations this earnings season — well above the 68% long-run average — with AI infrastructure revenue conversion cited as the key driver. The bank's core argument is a market-wide thesis shift from "can hyperscalers spend on AI?" to "can they convert that spending into profit?"
The most anticipated AI infrastructure earnings of the year arrive this week. Super Micro Computer reports Tuesday after the close (consensus: ~$11B revenue, $0.68 EPS), but the stock has fallen three months and sits roughly 50% off its highs; a fresh note out today from one Wall Street bull calls for 55% upside anchored to a $60 billion AI server backlog and margin recovery. CoreWeave ($90.67 entering the week) also reports Tuesday as a direct read on AI cloud demand; Applied Materials (Aug. 13 guidance: ~$8.95B revenue) completes the trifecta.
Palantir reported $1.94 billion in Q2 revenue, up 93% year over year, with EPS of $0.41 — beating the $0.346 consensus estimate by over 46% and extending its streak to nine straight beats. U.S. commercial revenue surged 149% to $764 million; U.S. government revenue rose 90% to $809 million. The stock jumped 12% to $172 following the August 3 report; full-year 2026 U.S. commercial guidance was raised to above $3.42 billion, up from $3.22 billion.
Advanced Micro Devices and Anthropic announced a strategic partnership in late July to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of AMD Instinct MI450 Series GPUs in AMD Helios rack-scale systems, with the first gigawatt deploying in H1 2027. AMD also committed up to $5 billion in strategic equity investment in Anthropic. The two companies will co-optimize Claude workloads for AMD's Instinct GPUs and accelerate ROCm software development, directly challenging Nvidia's dominance in AI training and inference infrastructure.
Wells Fargo upgraded Alphabet to Overweight from Equal Weight, raising its price target to $387 from $354, citing Google's widening compute capacity lead over hyperscaler peers. The bank's modeling shows GCP capacity growing from 15GW at year-end 2025 to 35GW by 2028, and projects 2026 Google Cloud revenue growth of 60% year over year — 11 points above Wall Street consensus. Morgan Stanley separately estimated that Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft's combined $1.4 trillion capex commitment is on track to generate 25–50% returns on invested capital.
Intel reported Q2 fiscal 2026 revenue of $16.13 billion, with Data Center and AI revenue up 59% — what CEO Lip-Bu Tan called Intel's "strongest revenue growth in more than fifteen years." The stock surged over 10% following the report, briefly touching $99.74. Intel guided Q3 revenue to $15.8–$16.8 billion, and management noted that Gaudi accelerators are gaining traction with cost-conscious enterprises seeking Nvidia alternatives, particularly for inference workloads.
Two major banks are squarely on opposite sides of the AI trade. JPMorgan prefers semiconductor stocks — nine Buy-rated names, each with at least 30% upside to price targets — arguing that hyperscaler spending flows directly to silicon makers. Morgan Stanley counters that chip expectations have become too high to clear, and favors Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft, projecting the trio's combined $1.4 trillion capex will yield 25–50% ROIC. The debate is actively driving sector rotation into this earnings-heavy week.
Bank of America semiconductor analyst Vivek Arya published a note projecting that AI hyperscaler capital expenditures will exceed $1.2 trillion over the next 12 months, up sharply from prior estimates near $700 billion. BofA flagged nine semiconductor beneficiaries, each with at least 30% upside to price targets: Nvidia, Broadcom, Marvell, Micron, AMD, Applied Materials, KLA Corp., Credo Technology, and Intel. Global chip industry sales hit $403.3 billion in Q2 2026, up 35.1% quarter over quarter.
AMD posted a record data center quarter in Q2 2026 but third-quarter revenue guidance came in below elevated Wall Street expectations, sending the stock down 7.4% in premarket trading after the August 4 report. Raymond James cut AMD from Strong Buy to Outperform, raising its price target to $195. TD Cowen pushed back, arguing AMD has attracted "more bearish sentiment than deserved," with the MI450 and Helios rack system ramping from mid-2026 and Q4 EPS expected to reach a greater-than-$10 run rate.
Anthropic has begun investor roadshow meetings ahead of a planned Nasdaq listing targeting October 2026. The company filed a draft S-1 confidentially after its $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation; the central pitch in investor meetings is a $47 billion annualized revenue run rate. If it prices near current valuation, the offering would rank among the largest IPOs in U.S. history. OpenAI — valued at approximately $920 billion — filed its own confidential S-1 in June and indicated a public listing "may be a while."
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