Semiconductor stocks gained in Wednesday trading. AMD rose 5.2%; TSMC rose 3%; Micron rose 2.7%; Arm rose 2.1%; Nvidia rose 1.7%.
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices rallied Wednesday after the chip maker moved to advance its artificial-intelligence strategy by purchasing what it called Europe’s largest private AI lab.
The California-based company said it was buying Finland-based Silo AI in a cash deal valued at $665 million.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing’s second-quarter sales were buoyed by the AI boom that’s fueling data center investment worldwide.
The sole supplier of Nvidia Corp. and Apple Inc.’s most advanced chips said revenue for June came to NT$207.9 billion. That means 40% growth in the June quarter to NT$673.5 billion, versus the average projection for a 35.5% rise.
The Wednesday sales figure comes days after the world’s largest contract chipmaker briefly reached a $1 trillion market capitalization on a tide of investment into artificial intelligence-related data centers and devices. Businesses around the world are racing to buy up hardware such as Nvidia chips to build up AI-supporting infrastructure. That’s prompted Wall Street brokerages to lift their price targets for TSMC, citing the chipmaker’s potential move to charge customers more in 2025 to elevate earnings further.
The AI chip orders have helped make up for lackluster smartphone sales, which are only just emerging from a trough. Apple remains Hsinchu-based TSMC’s biggest customer.
On Tuesday, KeyBanc analyst John Vinh reiterated his Overweight rating on NVIDIA Corp stock and raised his price target to $180 from $130, citing strong demand for the highest-end server model of its new Blackwell GPU product line.
“We expect GB200 NVL72 to represent the mainstream configuration in 2025,” he wrote. “Feedback this past quarter indicates demand for the GB200 next year is greater than what we had initially heard last quarter and could support over $200 billion in data center revenue in 2025.”
That $200 billion would be significantly ahead of the current $140 billion Wall Street consensus for Nvidia’s data center revenue next year, according to FactSet.