MW The chip-stock rally is back in full force - thanks to two big geopolitical developments
By Britney Nguyen
Iran peace prospects are spurring gains for riskier stocks, and Anthropic's battle with the U.S. government could prompt a broadening of the AI buildout
Shares of Nvidia, led by CEO Jensen Huang, were rising on Monday.
Chip stocks were closing in on a fresh record Monday, benefiting from the twin forces of a tentative peace deal with Iran and the prospect of greater semiconductor demand due to the escalating geopolitical battle over artificial intelligence.
Shares of Nvidia (NVDA), Broadcom $(AVGO)$ and Intel $(INTC)$ were up more than 2% on Monday afternoon, while Qualcomm $(QCOM)$ and Marvell Technology $(MRVL)$ shares climbed more than 5% and 7%, respectively.
Memory and storage makers were also getting a boost on Monday, with shares of Seagate Technology $(STX)$ and Micron Technology $(MU)$ rising more than 7% and 9%, respectively, and Western Digital $(WDC)$ shares soaring more than 14%.
The PHLX Semiconductor Index SOX is on pace to exit correction territory and seal a new record close above 14,000, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Meanwhile, shares of neocloud providers CoreWeave (CRWV) and Nebius Group (NBIS) were up more than 7% and 11%, respectively.
One potential catalyst could be Anthropic suspending access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models on Friday after the Trump administration announced export controls restricting foreign nationals from using them. The moves have raised concerns about global reliance on U.S.-based technology - and prompted speculation that other countries will increase spending on AI as a means of insurance.
If other countries decide to increase investments into AI infrastructure, that "could include making their own equipment, building their own data centers and funding their own frontier model development," D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria told MarketWatch.
That scenario could drive international and government business for chip companies, he said in emailed comments.
See more: U.S. restrictions on new Anthropic models could trigger a global AI arms race
Box CEO Aaron Levie said in an X post on Sunday that the U.S. government's decision could spur more countries to develop AI on their own, given that "a risk that was entirely theoretical and untested 2 days ago (that a model could be pulled back), now has a new precedent that's been set."
That may hamper U.S. leadership in AI over time, he said, as other countries will likely pursue open-weight models, or those with publicly available parameters, "which currently [are] generally not coming from the U.S."
But Mizuho desk-based analyst Jordan Klein said in emailed comments that the conflict between the U.S. government and Anthropic is "noise" that is "not material at all to the broader big picture chip narrative" and spending on AI.
The momentum in the chip sector could also relate to general market enthusiasm for assets typically deemed to be riskier.
"Clearly, the market has liked the fact that risk appears to have declined because of the agreement" with Iran, Joseph Shaposhnik, founder and portfolio manager of the Rainwater Equity ETF, told MarketWatch. He referred to a "broader risk-on rally."
Read on: AMD is seen as a CPU stock - but it's gaining ground here, too
Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices' stock $(AMD)$ jumped more than 7% during afternoon trading after the company announced the acquisition of memory optimization technology maker MEXT.
MEXT's AI-powered technology is "designed to make flash behave more like [dynamic random-access memory], helping expand usable memory capacity while maintaining performance and efficiency," AMD said in a statement.
Demand for DRAM has surged due to AI, leading to supply constraints and rising prices. AMD said its acquisition of MEXT will help customers reduce total cost of ownership and improve deployments.
Joseph Adinolfi contributed.
-Britney Nguyen
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June 15, 2026 12:33 ET (16:33 GMT)
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