Information Technology

The fair value estimate for Palo Alto Networks has been raised from US$336.70 to US$395.38, a roughly 17% increase in the underlying model, after a wave of analyst price target hikes. RBC Capital, Wells Fargo, BofA, Morgan Stanley and Truist lifted their targets into the low to mid US$400s, citing stronger cybersecurity demand as AI usage expands and customers consolidate spending with larger platforms. Goldman Sachs, Oppenheimer, BTIG and Susquehanna pointed to solid Q4 results and guidance, with broad based strength across firewalls, SASE, observability, identity and AI security modules. On the bearish side, Bernstein and Phillip Securities moved to more neutral stances while still raising targets, and Stephens and UBS described the risk or reward as more balanced with shares near peak valuation levels. The updated model trims the revenue growth assumption to about 17.31% from about 19.09% and the net profit margin outlook to about 13.84% from about 14.51%, while the future P/E rises to about 197.87x from about 164.67x and the discount rate adjusts to about 8.60% from 8.40%.

After market close on September 18, Aihua Group disclosed its 2026 plan to issue A-shares to specific investors, aiming to raise no more than 1.88 billion yuan for an integrated high-end capacitor capacity expansion project and to supplement working capital. This marks the company's first refinancing in eight years. The previous fundraising was through publicly issued convertible corporate bonds in 2018, with net proceeds of about 677 million yuan, all of which have been fully used. The number of subscribers will not exceed 35, and the number of shares to be issued will not exceed 30 percent of the company's total share capital before the issuance, namely 119,633,958 shares. The integrated high-end capacitor capacity expansion project has a total investment of about 1.507 billion yuan and a construction period of 24 months, located in the Electronic Information Industrial Park in Heshan District, Yiyang City, Hunan Province. In the first half of 2026, the company achieved operating revenue of 2.27 billion yuan, up 15.35 percent year on year, and net profit attributable to the parent company of 170 million yuan, up 17.21 percent year on year. Revenue from industrial control and new energy products has risen to 54 percent of the total. The issuance still needs to be approved by the company's shareholders' meeting, reviewed and approved by the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and registered with the China Securities Regulatory Commission before implementation.

TSMC closed at $434.67, up 1.02% and outpacing the S&P 500's 0.17% gain, while the Dow fell 0.18% and the Nasdaq rose 0.4%. The chipmaker is forecast to report quarterly EPS of $4.45, a 52.4% increase from the year-ago quarter, on revenue of $45.54 billion, up 37.59%. For the full year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates anticipate earnings of $16.55 per share and revenue of $167.09 billion, representing shifts of +55.4% and +36.49%, respectively, from last year. Over the past month the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has risen 0.64%, and TSMC holds a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy). The stock trades at a Forward P/E ratio of 26, in line with its industry average, and a PEG ratio of 0.95.

Unity Software Inc. closed at $41.16, down 1.63% from the prior session, lagging the S&P 500's 0.17% gain. The company is projected to post earnings of $0.34 per share for its upcoming quarter, a 70% increase from the same quarter last year, on revenue of $564.84 million, up 20.02%. For the full fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates project earnings of $1.21 per share and revenue of $2.22 billion, representing growth of 40.7% and 19.95%, respectively. Unity carries a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy), with the consensus EPS estimate unchanged over the past 30 days, and trades at a forward P/E of 34.58 versus an industry average of 20.16.

Strategy Inc. shares climbed just over 16% on Friday, rising $21.67 to close at $153.92, as crypto-related stocks broadly advanced after the SEC approved a temporary "Innovation Exemption" allowing certain venues and liquidity providers to facilitate trading in tokenized U.S.-listed stocks. The move followed two weeks of choppy trading for the stock, which operates as both a Bitcoin Treasury Company and an enterprise analytics software provider. Strategy holds approximately 845,050 Bitcoin as a treasury reserve, financed through equity, debt, and preferred securities. Volume reached 53.9 million shares, roughly 1.96 times the one-month average, and the stock's one-month return stands at 35.39%.

CFRA Research expects Apple to sell essentially every foldable iPhone Duo it can produce, with the device potentially accounting for 5 to 8 percent of iPhone units and more than 10 percent of iPhone revenue. The iPhone 18 Pro hit store shelves on Friday, a full month before the foldable iPhone Duo's release in late October. CFRA senior vice president and equity analyst Angelo Zino said the firm initially forecast the Duo at about 4 to 5 percent of iPhone volume, but now sees potential for that figure to be higher, closer to 5 to 8 percent of units, with pricing pushing its revenue contribution north of 10 percent. Zino said the key question is how supply constrained the device will be, and called early indications for the Pro devices a pretty solid start to the iPhone 18 cycle. He added that the cycle could have longer legs because Apple is pushing out its base devices into the March quarter, helping sustain momentum into the March and June quarters, while China demand for foldables remains a variable to watch.

Intel and SK Hynix are exploring partnership opportunities to manufacture memory chips in the United States, reportedly centered on Intel's long-delayed Ohio manufacturing complex, with possibilities ranging from SK Hynix leasing capacity to a broader joint venture involving cloud companies. No formal partnership has been announced, and SK Hynix stressed that no specific plans or arrangements have been finalized. Since reports of the potential partnership surfaced Wednesday, Intel shares have surged roughly 10%, while SK Hynix has climbed about 5%; SK Hynix stock has risen 20% since its U.S. Nasdaq debut in July, while Intel is up about 4% over the same period. Intel's turnaround is gaining traction independently, with Q2 revenue jumping 25% year over year to $16.1 billion, Data Center and AI revenue surging 59% to $6.3 billion, Intel Foundry revenue up 31%, and management guiding Q3 sales to $15.8-$16.8 billion, while the Zacks Consensus calls for fiscal 2026 revenue to rise nearly 18% and FY26 EPS to soar to $1.50 from $0.42 per share last year. SK Hynix reported record Q2 performance amid robust AI demand, began mass shipments of HBM4 with production expected to ramp through the second half of the year, and shipped samples of HBM4E, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate calls for FY26 revenue to soar over 250% to $240.09 billion and EPS to jump more than 500% to $25.69. Despite its AI-memory leadership, SK Hynix trades at a forward P/E multiple of 7X, while Intel trades at more than 100X forward earnings; SK Hynix carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), while Intel holds a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Nvidia, Google and Emerald AI have launched the AI Energy Management Alliance, or AEMA, a coalition that dynamically manages the electricity use of data centers in response to grid conditions. Emerald AI founder and CEO Varun Sivaram said the alliance's founding members are joined by a cohort of 20 launch partners, including the AI lab Anthropic, the semiconductor firm Analog Devices, and the energy companies AES, NRG, Constellation, RWE and National Grid. Sivaram said Emerald AI, which was founded under two years ago, is building with Nvidia and Digital Realty the world's first from-the-ground-up power-flexible AI data center, a 100 megawatt facility in Manassas, Virginia, that comes online later this year. He said Google, one of the founding members, has already done a gigawatt of demand response for its data centers, while Emerald and Nvidia have completed six demonstrations around the world, in London, Phoenix and Virginia. Sivaram said the alliance is talking to the FERC commissioners, state regulators and the administration about a grand bargain in which flexible AI data centers act as good citizens to grids and communities in return for faster and larger connections to the power grid.

Micron Technology shares rose about 1.3% to $990.14 Friday morning after Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said memory prices have surged fivefold to sevenfold and that supply constraints will persist into next year. Tan's comments reinforce the tight memory market now driving Micron's profitability, with the company's latest reported quarter delivering an 84.6% GAAP gross margin and management guiding the following quarter to roughly 86%. At $990.14, Micron trades 54.71% above its $640 GuruFocus GF Value, a premium that raises the bar for the company to convert the pricing windfall into durable cash flows before supply eventually catches up.

CleanSpark Inc.'s debut junk-bond offering for a data center tied to Meta Platforms Inc. drew orders of about $10 billion, more than four times the deal's size, according to people familiar with the matter. The five-year notes were set at almost $2.28 billion and launched at 98.5 cents on the dollar to yield 8.25%, roughly 1.75 percentage points above the average for BB rated firms tracked by Bloomberg. The fundraising, led by Morgan Stanley, will help finance construction of a data center in Sandersville, Georgia, that has been fully leased to Anviran LLC, a Meta subsidiary, under a $6.6 billion, 20-year contract. The facility is expected to begin operations in the fourth quarter of 2027, with Meta guaranteeing rent and operating expenses. Data center developers have now sold more than $3 billion of high-yield bonds so far this year, most backed by long-term leases with hyperscalers including Oracle Corp. and Amazon.com Inc.

Palantir Technologies' commercial revenue surged 110% to $945 million in the second quarter of 2026, more than doubling the $451 million recorded a year earlier. The commercial segment added $494 million year over year, expanding by more than its entire year-earlier base, while government revenue rose 79% to $990 million from $553 million. Combined, the two businesses generated $1.94 billion in second-quarter 2026 revenue, up from roughly $1 billion a year earlier, with commercial operations contributing more than half of the combined year-over-year increase and narrowing the gap with government revenue to just $45 million. Among peers, C3.ai reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue of $51.6 million, down substantially year over year, and forecast fiscal 2027 revenue of $210-$240 million, while Datadog's second-quarter 2026 revenue rose 36% to $1.12 billion, with customers contributing at least $100,000 in ARR up 23% to roughly 4,720 and free cash flow of $279 million. Palantir shares have gained 37% over the past three months against 19% industry growth, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 39.96X versus an industry average of 4.2X, carrying a Value Score of F and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

KLA Corporation is benefiting from accelerating artificial intelligence infrastructure spending, which is driving higher investments in leading-edge foundry and logic technologies and boosting demand for its process-control solutions. In fiscal 2026, the Semiconductor Process Control segment's revenues increased 12% year over year, and overall fiscal 2026 revenues rose 12% year over year to $13.58 billion. During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, management raised its calendar 2026 wafer-fabrication equipment market estimate, including advanced packaging, to the low-$150 billion range, up from its previous $140 billion-plus view and approximately $120 billion in calendar 2025. KLAC expects second-half 2026 revenues to be approximately 20% higher than the first half, aided by high-performance computing, high-bandwidth memory, increasing extreme ultraviolet adoption in DRAM and advanced packaging technologies such as hybrid bonding, and said backlog was expected to reach about $12.5 billion. The company faces intensifying competition from Applied Materials, which expects its process diagnostics and control business to grow more than 50% in calendar 2026, and from ASML, which expects advanced foundry and logic revenues to rise about 25% in 2026 and extreme ultraviolet revenues to increase roughly 45%.

Amphenol's IT datacom business, which represented 43% of the company's total sales in the second quarter of 2026, saw revenues surge 89% year over year and 63% organically, with management saying the AI revenue run rate has reached roughly $10.5-$11 billion. Management noted that virtually all of the 22% sequential IT datacom growth in the quarter came from AI-related products, as customers require more copper, optics and power for larger, more complex AI clusters. The company's acquisition of CommScope contributed more than $1.2 billion in sales in the quarter, with CommScope's IT datacom business nearly doubling year over year; management expects that market to account for just under half of CommScope's 2026 sales, compared with roughly one-third in 2025. Amphenol faces tough competition from TE Connectivity, whose Digital Data Networks sales rose 34% year over year in the third quarter of fiscal 2026 with bookings up more than 70% year to date, and from Marvell Technology, whose data-center revenues increased 46% year over year to $2.17 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2027. Amphenol shares have risen 16% year to date, trailing the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector's 17% gain, and trade at a forward 12-month price/earnings of 25.32X versus the sector's 20.38X, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings stands at 72 cents per share, up 5 cents over the past 30 days and implying 53.19% growth.

Samsara now expects a thinner free cash flow margin and a fatter operating margin for fiscal 2027, as the company pays upfront for the IoT hardware that carries its AI subscriptions. The CFO said Samsara buys the devices upfront while revenue comes back ratably over the customer contract, and the company cited the IoT devices that faster growth needs, inventory it is prebuying as a buffer, and higher supply chain costs in the second half of fiscal 2027. Free cash flow margin is guided about 100 basis points below fiscal 2026, which on the $2.04 billion of revenue guided for fiscal 2027 works out to roughly $20 million, while the non-GAAP operating margin guide rose to 21% from 20%. More than 20% of Samsara's net new contract value came from emerging products in each of the last three quarters, and deals with a top-five U.S. city included more than $2 million of emerging products in fiscal Q2 2027. Samsara crossed $2.1 billion in annual recurring revenue in fiscal Q2 2027, up 30% over the past year, and raised its fiscal 2027 revenue, growth, operating margin and earnings guides at one release.

Sandisk shares rallied sharply on Friday, climbing as much as 7.8% and still up 7.5% as of 12:34 p.m. ET, after S&P Dow Jones Indices announced earlier this month that the chipmaker would be added to the S&P 100, replacing longtime member Colgate-Palmolive, before the start of trading on Monday, Sept. 21. The S&P 100 is a subset of the S&P 500, the benchmark comprising roughly 500 of the largest U.S. companies, and includes the index's largest and most well-established members. The move is expected to spark short-term buying by major index and exchange-traded funds that track the S&P 100, which likely drove Friday's gain, while longer-term effects are seen as limited to prestige and increased visibility among institutional buyers. Sandisk's operating performance has been strong: for its fiscal 2026 fourth quarter ended July 3, revenue soared 372% year over year and 51% sequentially to $8.97 billion, while diluted earnings per share of $43.97 swung from a loss in the prior-year period and jumped 91% quarter-over-quarter. The stock trades at 24 times earnings and 8 times forward earnings.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is sitting on a record pile of AI networking orders it cannot yet ship, and the gap between bookings and revenue is now the central question for the stock. Orders for the Networks for AI portfolio reached $700 million in fiscal Q3 2026, a new high, after the company blew past its cumulative fiscal 2026 target of at least $2 billion and raised that target to $2.5 billion to $3 billion. The hardware behind those orders includes routers and switches HPE is supplying to Oracle for one of the largest AI cloud infrastructure build-outs, work that extends more than a decade of engineering between Oracle and Juniper Networks, the business HPE acquired last year. Networking revenue rose 10% in fiscal Q3 2026 against a prior-year base that includes Juniper Networks, while networking orders rose 36%, and the segment brought in $2.9 billion of the $12.2 billion in total revenue HPE reported for the quarter. Management attributes the gap to supply, citing memory and wafer capacity that have gated supply since the start of fiscal 2026, and HPE has more than doubled its networking purchase commitments quarter over quarter while signing multiyear supply agreements to lock capacity. Networking revenue growth is guided to 11% to 13% in fiscal Q4 2026 and 14% to 17% in fiscal 2027, with the next scheduled look at the business coming at the Networking Investor Day on September 30, 2026.

Nebius Group shares jumped nearly 9% in Thursday premarket trading after the AI cloud provider reportedly raised prices across several compute services, a signal that demand for scarce GPU capacity remains strong. According to a customer communication circulated online, Nebius plans to increase prices for several on-demand GPU offerings beginning October 1, covering Nvidia's H100, H200, B200 and B300 accelerators. The reported increases extend beyond GPUs: prices for AMD EPYC Genoa CPU compute are expected to rise 25% to $0.015 per vCPU-hour from $0.012, while memory pricing tied to Genoa systems is reportedly increasing about 41% to $0.0045 per GiB-hour from $0.0032. Nebius has not publicly confirmed the pricing changes and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The market reaction spread beyond Nebius, with IREN shares rising about 5.1% in premarket trading and CoreWeave gaining roughly 6.1%, suggesting investors read the reported increases as a positive signal for the wider neocloud industry.

Micron demonstrated a 512GB server memory module that holds as much memory as four 128GB modules, with AMD and Intel having validated it for future platforms, but volume production is not expected until the second half of 2027. The company said HBM4 has already crossed $1 billion in revenue, with the 12-high ramp running twice as fast as HBM3E, and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told investors that DRAM and NAND industry demand continues to significantly exceed industry supply, a tightness he expects to persist beyond calendar 2027. Micron has signed 16 Strategic Customer Agreements covering roughly 25% of revenue over their term, with cumulative minimum-price RPO of approximately $100 billion. The stock trades at a trailing PE of 21x and a forward PE of 6x, with the average analyst target at $1,513.11, against consensus fiscal 2027 EPS of $156.0661 on revenue of $244.46 billion, up from a fiscal 2026 EPS estimate of $73.4388. Micron is now the only US maker in both DRAM and NAND after the SanDisk spinoff left Western Digital out of NAND, though the 2027 pricing backdrop the new module lands into cannot be forecast from here.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff unveiled AIforce, an AI connectivity layer that lets employees access Salesforce data and run complex workflows inside third-party AI tools such as Anthropic's Claude and Slack, at Dreamforce 2026, using the stage to directly criticize Microsoft. AIforce launched with three integrations: Claudeforce, built in partnership with Anthropic, brings Salesforce data directly into Claude; Slackforce connects that same data to conversations in Slack; and AgentforceCoworker operates inside Salesforce's own Lightning interface. Benioff framed AIforce as the answer to what he calls the "Fantasyland" problem, arguing that rival AI tools like Microsoft's Copilot lack the reliable business data layer required to safely power a business, extending a public rivalry that dates to Dreamforce 2024, when he compared Copilot to "Clippy." Salesforce generated $11.35 billion in revenue during its most recent quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations on both earnings and revenue, and CRM stock has rallied about 34% over the past month after falling as much as 37% earlier in 2026, closing at $255.65 on Sept. 15. On the same day as the Dreamforce announcement, Salesforce suffered a global service disruption that locked some customers out of their systems, and investors are watching Agentforce and Data 360 adoption numbers in the next quarterly report, where combined annual recurring revenue already exceeds $2.9 billion, more than 200% growth from a year ago.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned this week that memory prices have jumped 5x to 7x and now account for roughly 75% of the cost of some lower-end phones and laptops, cautioning the shortage could deepen in 2027. Tan told investors the industry faces one of the most severe supply constraints in its history across leading-edge logic, silicon wafers, memory, and subscripts, and said these shortages will persist for the foreseeable future. Intel is pivoting production toward data-center CPUs and now guides 2026 capital expenditure above $20 billion, with 2027 spending set to run significantly higher. Micron Technology echoed the outlook, saying it sees tightness continuing beyond 2027, aligned with SK hynix flagging 2027 as potentially the industry's worst supply year. Micron's $100 billion in take-or-pay remaining performance obligations and $22 billion in customer deposits and letters of credit lock in floor pricing above prior peak margins, while its fiscal third-quarter gross margin hit 84.9% on DRAM pricing gains in the low 60s percentage range and NAND pricing in the mid-80s percentage range.

Seagate Technology received a buy rating and a $899.28 price target from 24/7 Wall St., implying 14.82% upside over the next 12 months at a 90% confidence level. The call follows a blowout fiscal Q4 report on July 28, 2026, in which Seagate posted revenue of $3.63 billion, up 48.49% year over year, and non-GAAP EPS of $5.71, beating expectations by 12.11%, while full-year FY26 free cash flow hit a record $3.105 billion, up 279.58%. Management now guides to annual revenue growth of a minimum of 20% over the next few years, up from prior mid-teens targets, and CEO Dave Mosley said nearline capacity is almost fully allocated through calendar 2027. Mosaic 4 HAMR drives deliver up to 44 terabytes per drive, and Mosaic 5 is targeting 50 terabytes with qualification shipments in late 2027. The stock trades at a forward P/E of 23, roughly in line with Western Digital's 21, while Micron's forward P/E of 6 highlights how much Seagate has already re-rated; the bear case lands at $685.64 on hyperscaler concentration risk.

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max went on sale Friday, the company's first new iPhone launch under CEO John Ternus and its first to hit the market amid the AI-driven global memory and storage shortage. The memory crunch pushed the base iPhone 18 Pro to $1,199 and the base iPhone 18 Pro Max to $1,299, a $100 increase over the iPhone 17 Pros. The foldable iPhone Duo is not due out until Oct. 23 and will cost $1,999. Demand for the Pro models is running hot, with orders placed today facing a three-week wait for delivery. Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster wrote Friday that Pro model pre-order lead times are about 15% longer than a year ago on launch day, and that the dual-cycle launch, which splits the base iPhone 18, iPhone 18e and iPhone Air 2 into early next year, appears to be helping early sales. The new phones ship with the improved Apple Intelligence platform and AI-powered Siri AI, which remains in beta.

BILL Holdings reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP net income of 84 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 69 cents and rising 58.5% from a year ago, on revenues of $436.2 million that grew 13.8% year over year and topped estimates by 1.5%. Total payment volume reached $98 billion, up 14% year over year, while core revenues, comprising subscription and transaction fees, rose 16% to $400.5 million. Non-GAAP operating income increased to $101.6 million from $56.4 million, lifting the non-GAAP operating margin to 23%, up 860 basis points year over year. The company repurchased approximately 8.4 million shares during the quarter for about $300 million, leaving $400 million under its $1 billion share repurchase authorization. For fiscal 2027, management forecasts total revenues of $1.81-$1.86 billion, core revenues of $1.67-$1.72 billion and non-GAAP net income per share of $3.56-$3.79.

Analog Devices reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP earnings of $3.45 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 3.6% and up from $2.05 per share a year earlier, while revenues of $4.02 billion surpassed the consensus by 2.5% and rose 40% from the year-ago quarter's $2.88 billion. Within that total, Industrial contributed $1.97 billion, or 49% of revenues, up 53% year over year; Automotive brought in $998.2 million, or 25%, up 16%; Communications generated $654.5 million, or 16%, up 84%; and Consumer added $397.2 million, or 10%, up 6%. The adjusted gross margin expanded 330 basis points to 72.5% and the adjusted operating margin reached 50%, up 780 basis points year over year. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, management guided revenues to $4.3 billion, plus or minus $100 million, with adjusted earnings of $3.86 per share, plus or minus $0.15, and an adjusted operating margin of about 52%. The company returned $1.7 billion to shareholders in the quarter, comprising $535 million in dividends and $1.16 billion in share repurchases, and held $2.17 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of Aug. 1, 2026.

Nokia Corporation is expanding its partnership with Microsoft Corporation to build an agentic, unified data foundation aimed at helping telecom providers scale artificial intelligence-driven operations. Under the agreement, Nokia Data Suite integrates with Microsoft Fabric, combining telco-specific data products with unified analytics, governance and AI capabilities across cloud, hybrid and on-premises environments. The company is initially applying these capabilities to autonomous Voice over New Radio assurance, where AI agents detect network anomalies, analyze service issues and recommend corrective actions. Nokia faces competition from Ericsson, which expanded its Intelligent Automation Platform to support automation across radio and core networks, and from Cisco Systems, which is integrating AI agents into its networking portfolio. Nokia shares have soared 123.6% over the past year compared with the industry's 20.6% growth, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 2.42 versus the industry tally of 4.93.

CleanSpark has signed a 20-year, $6.6 billion triple-net lease for its Sandersville, Georgia, site, a deal the company expects to generate $330 million in annual revenue. Chairman and CEO Matt Schultz said the site includes a fully energized 250-megawatt substation, that CleanSpark secured an additional 122 acres with community support, and that the tenant received short-term exclusivity for up to 885 additional megawatts in Texas, with the first data hall targeted for delivery in December 2027. The announcement came during an H.C. Wainwright panel where mining and AI infrastructure executives described a broad pivot from bitcoin operations toward AI colocation, cloud services and GPU-as-a-service. Core Scientific's Russell Cann said direct-liquid-cooled construction costs have climbed from roughly $4.5 million per megawatt for early projects to about $10 million to $10.5 million per megawatt for facilities turned on this year and $12 million to $13 million per megawatt for projects expected to start operating in 2027. Cann also said Core Scientific recently announced a roughly 500-megawatt agreement with AMD, with AMD holding rights to the next 2,000 megawatts across sites in Hunt County and Pecos, Texas, and Muskogee, Oklahoma, under a 15-year triple-net lease at $125 per megawatt or a modified gross structure at $145 per megawatt. Executives pushed back on AI bubble concerns, with Cann noting roughly 5 gigawatts of rack space is delivered annually against approximately 15 gigawatts of annual chip demand, while cautioning that many power requests may be duplicative or unsupported by actual transmission, substations or fuel supply.

Micron Technology is trading at roughly 6x forward earnings against a consensus analyst price target of $1,513.11, implying about 59% upside from its current $953.49 share price. The Boise-based memory maker, the only U.S.-headquartered producer of DRAM and NAND at scale, has signed 16 multi-year take-or-pay contracts covering roughly 25% of revenue, backed by $22 billion in cash deposits and letters of credit, with remaining performance obligations near $100 billion. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said AI has elevated the value of memory, and management expects high-bandwidth memory supply tightness to persist beyond calendar 2027, with data-center DRAM and NAND bit shipments projected to more than double from two years ago. Micron has already shipped over $1 billion in HBM4 revenue, with the 12-high volume ramp tracking twice as fast as HBM3E 12-high, and fiscal fourth-quarter guidance calls for record revenue of $50 billion plus or minus $1 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $31 plus or minus $1 at a gross margin near 86%. The stock is up 234.28% year-to-date and 501.33% over the past year, and beginning December 9, 2026, Micron plans to increase capital returns and eventually return 100% of excess cash to shareholders.

Cloudflare said more than 50% of the traffic flowing across its network was nonhuman in the second quarter of 2026, reflecting rapid growth in AI agents and machine-to-machine traffic. The company ended the quarter with more than 7.4 million developers on its Workers platform, adding nearly two million in the quarter alone, and management said Workers remains one of the fastest-growing parts of its business. Cloudflare also introduced Monetization Gateway, Wallets and cloudflare.pay during the quarter to support transactions between AI agents, businesses and content providers. Second-quarter revenues increased 36% year over year, while dollar-based net retention reached 120%, and management said its total addressable market has expanded to more than $300 billion from $30 billion at the time of its IPO. The Zacks Consensus Estimate points to Cloudflare revenue growth of 32.5% in 2026 and 28.6% in 2027, with 2026 earnings estimated at $1.26 per share, up 35.5% from the prior year.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company expects to sell roughly twice as many chips next year as it does this year, calling it one of his strongest signals yet that AI demand remains far from exhausted. Speaking to reporters Thursday at a summit in Scotland with King Charles III, Huang said the reason is AI's contribution to different industries and economies, and that people in almost every country Nvidia operates in want to invest in AI. The forecast adds to Nvidia's increasingly aggressive outlook: the company recently said it expects roughly 70% growth in the fiscal year ending January 2028, which would put annual revenue around $673 billion. Nvidia does not disclose total chip unit shipments, making Huang's volume forecast difficult to translate directly into revenue, though its most important products include data-center GPUs, particularly Blackwell and next-generation Rubin systems; Huang said last fall that Nvidia had shipped about 6 million Blackwell GPUs over four quarters. The comments come as investors debate whether hyperscaler spending and model-training demand can keep growing at the breakneck pace seen during the first phase of the AI buildout, with the key question being not simply whether Nvidia can double chip volumes but what that mix looks like, since higher shipments of premium Blackwell and Rubin systems could support enormous revenue growth while greater unit volume at lower average selling prices would produce a different margin outcome.