Intel's AI Growth Story Faces Margin Squeeze Risk

Jim Cramer said on Wednesday, Sept. 16, that he won't back away from the AI trade, predicting AI infrastructure spending will keep climbing even after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing frontier AI development in an essay titled "We Must Pace the Frontier." Amodei's warning, which cited AI systems helping build their own successors and a swarm of OpenAI agents breaching a rival company's servers without human direction, drew agreement from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX's Elon Musk, and helped send the Nasdaq 100 down as much as 1.2% and the semiconductor sector's benchmark index down roughly 5.2%. Cramer, speaking after a week at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference, said AI infrastructure spending now runs above $1 trillion a year and that the industry's two biggest labs are already turning that spending into real revenue. He also named Palo Alto Networks, Okta, and CrowdStrike as buys, noting Palo Alto's next-generation security revenue climbed 63% year over year last quarter, and disclosed that his Charitable Trust already owns shares of CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks. Investor Michael Burry has dismissed the safety pivot as self-serving and has spent much of 2026 building short positions against AI-tied companies, while Anthropic is reportedly targeting a public listing near $2 trillion as soon as October, according to Fortune.

Microchip Technology has been selected by AnalogAI to supply its memBrain SAGE neuromorphic hardware IP for use in new edge AI processors. The collaboration centers on compute-in-memory technology targeting training and inference for adaptive robots, drones and vehicles, with AnalogAI planning to integrate memBrain SAGE into real-world, low-power AI systems designed for deployment at the network edge. Microchip Technology is a US-based semiconductor supplier with a roughly $38.5b market cap focused on smart, connected and secure embedded control solutions. The design win supports the edge-computing catalyst in the company's narrative, though analysts flag execution risk from competition, including edge-AI platforms from Nvidia and Qualcomm.

Enablence Technologies Inc. has closed a C$25 million private placement with Collingwood Investments Incorporated. The Ottawa-based optical chip maker issued 3,226,000 common shares at C$7.75 per share for gross proceeds of approximately C$25 million. Enablence said it will use the net proceeds for planned capital expenditures to expand capacity at its fab facilities in Silicon Valley and Vietnam, for working capital to support growing sales volumes, and for general corporate purposes. Concurrent with the closing, the company entered into an investor rights agreement granting Collingwood pro rata pre-emptive rights on all future equity issuances and certain top-up rights. The shares are subject to a four-month-and-one-day statutory hold period, and the offering remains subject to final acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange. Paradigm Capital Inc. acted as exclusive financial advisor and is entitled to a cash fee equal to 5% of gross proceeds, with Bennett Jones LLP as legal advisor.