By Mackenzie Tatananni
The AI revolution is picking up steam again -- and Wall Street may miss buying opportunities amid its focus on the Iran war, one seasoned investor warns. Case in point is Marvell Technology.
Marvell is an AI infrastructure provider that supports agentic artificial intelligence, a type of AI that gained traction earlier this year with the viral success of OpenClaw. Unlike a standard chatbot, OpenClaw runs on a user's machine -- executing tasks like controlling a browser and interacting with messaging apps.
So far this year, Marvell stock has gained 6.4%, even though the tech-heavy Nasdaq has dropped nearly 10%. For other chip makers, it has been a mixed bag: Broadcom and Advanced Micro Devices are down 15% and 7.5%, respectively, but Intel is up 13%.
Evidently, Marvell has its supporters on Wall Street. But OpenClaw's momentum is a sign the agentic AI era has moved "from concept to operational reality," according to Jordi Visser, head of AI research for 22V Research, a New York-based firm. For Marvell, "that transition represents a catalyst that investors still appear to be materially underestimating."
Agentic AI systems require different infrastructure than a chatbot, which relies on preset scripts to answer questions. The needs of those systems call for more computing power, networking, storage activity, "and far greater infrastructure intensity than a standard question-and-answer interaction," he wrote.
Visser believes Marvell is positioned to provide that infrastructure, playing a critical role in supplying the components that allow an entire system to function at scale.
The company has "methodically positioned itself across nearly every critical bottleneck in AI," and is approaching an inflection point, he said. Its total addressable market expansion in mid-2025 and commentary around bookings growth on the latest earnings call mark a shift from recovery to what Visser described as "compounding acceleration"
"Marvell's custom silicon business is the most important part of the story," Visser said, noting the business has gone from essentially no revenue to about $1.5 billion in fiscal 2026.
Marvell's chips and accelerators should be even more valuable in a world driven by agentic AI, seeing as the technology requires continuous loops of reasoning, tool use, memory retrieval, and task coordination.
Visser said the company also stands to benefit from its "strong position in the interconnect and optical layers that allow AI clusters to scale beyond a single rack." In other words, an AI agent orchestrating a multistep workflow can't afford to wait seconds for data to move across racks.
For Visser, Marvell faces a perfect storm of conditions -- the rise of OpenClaw, earnings acceleration, and the coming release of Nvidia's Rubin platform -- that "creates a rare moment in which catalysts are aligning across the AI infrastructure stack."
As the Iran war dominates headlines, Visser believes OpenClaw's momentum is being overlooked. The advent of OpenClaw signals that the orchestration layer commanded by agentic systems is maturing faster than expected. In his eyes, Marvell is a compelling way to play the transformation.
Analysts view Marvell stock favorably. Of 43 firms tracked by FactSet, 35 rate shares at Buy or the equivalent. The remaining eight rate it at Hold.
Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 30, 2026 12:31 ET (16:31 GMT)
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