Intel and NVIDIA Pull the Market Up: Chipmakers Back in Favor

While we discuss new capabilities of chatbots, the stock market reminds us of a simple truth: all the magic of artificial intelligence begins with silicon. Today's pre-market sessions in the USA clearly showed where exactly investors are putting their money. While software giants and gadget makers show sluggish dynamics, companies responsible for the 'brains' of the industry are demonstrating confident growth.

Intel was the main surprise, with its shares jumping more than 5%. Against the backdrop of a prolonged crisis and the company's attempts to restructure its business, such a jump looks like a powerful vote of confidence.

Why is this happening now? Intel had long been in the role of a follower, letting more agile competitors move ahead. However, recent news about the development of their foundry business and potential orders for chip manufacturing for third-party companies are beginning to change the perception of the brand.

If Intel was previously perceived as a cumbersome giant from the past century, now the market sees in it a strategically important asset capable of ensuring production independence in conditions of global instability.

A 5% growth is not just a correction, it is a signal that investors are ready to believe in the return of a legend, provided it continues to focus on AI infrastructure.

NVIDIA is also keeping pace, adding more than 2%. It seems that for Jensen Huang's company this is already routine, but given their capitalization, every two percent is worth tens of billions of dollars in market value.

The market remains hungry for GPUs, and no reports of delays in new architectures can dampen this appetite.

NVIDIA has de facto become an 'AI tax': any company wishing to build its own neural network is obliged to pay this corporation.

As long as this status quo persists, the company's shares will remain the main barometer of the health of the entire technology industry.

Against this backdrop, the successes of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft look much more modest — they are all adding less than half a percent.

This is an interesting divergence: investors trust more those who sell shovels than those who are trying to dig up a goldmine with their help in the form of new subscriptions and services.

Cloud giants are spending enormous sums on equipment purchases, and the market is currently assessing these expenses as a risk rather than a guaranteed future profit.

We see a classic picture of infrastructure layer formation, where component manufacturers reap the benefits first.

Apple and Meta ended up in the 'red zone'. A decline of 0.19% and 0.28% respectively is almost a statistical error, but the fact that they fell against the backdrop of overall growth is noteworthy.

Apple is still trying to convince the world that their approach to AI in smartphones will become mainstream, while Meta continues to burn billions in the furnace of metaverses and open LLMs.

It seems that investors have decided to take a pause and see how these ambitions will turn into real cash.

In a world where Intel is growing by 5%, simply being a 'big tech giant' is no longer enough — you need to be part of the AI computing supply chain.

The key: The market has finally stopped evaluating the IT sector as a single entity. Now there are 'hardware' favorites and everyone else.

Will Intel be able to maintain this pace, or are we witnessing a temporary spike against the backdrop of short-term expectations?