AI infrastructure spending is still compounding: MU, TSM, NVDA, and AVGO all posted higher profit per dollar than a year ago even as their stocks ran, and the buildout may stretch toward $800 billion this year and a trillion-plus next. The setup is framed as durable because chips keep getting more memory, power, cooling, and networking needs each generation, while annual chip releases and 2030 supply deals lock in demand. Against that backdrop, NVTS is pitched as the next levered way to play the power-conversion bottleneck, with multiple near-term catalysts but still an early, unprofitable business. A sponsored segment separately pitches ZNA as a fast-growing drone roll-up with defense optionality.
S&P 500 broke to 7,840 today, its first all-time high since mid-August; it is up about 14% this year, but the rest of the market excluding the 10 biggest stocks and semis is only up about 5%.
MU rose from $191 a year ago to $1,046 today, a 5.5x move; last fiscal year it earned about $8 a share, this fiscal year reported September 30 it earned over $75 a share, so profit rose 9x while the stock rose 5.5x.
MU profit per $100 of stock rose from $4.34 to $7.22; NVDA’s newest chips use more than 3.5x as much of the high-end memory MU makes as a chip from a couple of years ago, and MU says customer deals already run through 2030.
MU chart: peaked at $1,255 in June, fell to $738 in July, then climbed back toward resistance around $1,100; a close above $1,100 would reopen the old high, with support around $900 to $960 and price still more than 50% above the 200-day.
TSM is up about 60% in a year from $32 to $482 and hit a new all-time high this week; profit per share in dollar terms is up about 75%, with $100 buying around $327 of profit a year ago and around $357 today.
TSM guided the next quarter to around $45 billion in sales, a record, and reports on October 15th; the thesis is that advanced AI chips must be made in TSM factories no matter whether NVDA, AMD, or a new entrant wins.
TSM’s biggest risk is geopolitical: most factories sit on an island China claims, and that longstanding risk is part of why it trades at a discount to the companies it manufactures for.
TSM chart: topped at $479 at the end of June, pulled back to $373 in July, then broke out above the old high this week; the breakout stays alive as long as it closes above $470 to $479, with the 50-day around $428 and $500 the next round number.
NVDA hit a new all-time high today and is closing in on a $6 trillion market cap; over the past year the stock is up about 29% while profit per share jumped from $15 a quarter to $222 a quarter, up 111%.
NVDA profit grew almost four times faster than the stock; $100 of stock a year ago produced about $2.26 of profit versus $3.70 today.
NVDA last quarter revenue was $96 billion, more than double, and guidance for the next quarter is $108 billion.
NVDA spent almost 5 months under $235 to $237 before breaking through this week; the breakout stays alive above $235, with the 50-day at $220 and $250 the next round number.
AVGO is up about 12% in a year but still about 24% below its June high; last quarter revenue rose 86%, AI chip revenue rose 221%, and profit per share roughly doubled from about $169 to $332.
AVGO profit per $100 rose from $2 to $3.50; the stock peaked at $495 in June, bottomed at $336 in mid-September, then jumped almost 4% to close back above its 50-day and 200-day around $368 to $373.
The AI buildout thesis is that the five biggest cloud companies are on track to spend close to $800 billion this year and the final number could be a trillion-plus, because each chip generation needs more memory, power, cooling, and networking, while annual new-chip cycles replace hardware faster than the old 5-to-6-year data-center refresh cycle.
AI demand looks sticky because MU said last week more than 75% of its shipments for the coming fiscal year are covered by supply agreements through 2030, and TSM just logged another record quarter while NVDA is at $108 billion for a single quarter.
NVTS is down about 65% from its June high, but the pitch is that it is solving the conversion of high-voltage data-center power down to about one volt for AI chips, with a move toward an 800-volt design using GaN and silicon carbide.
NVTS built a board that takes 800 volts straight down to six volts in one step inside the rack; that design was shown at NVDA’s partner event in Taipei this past summer and is being shown to big cloud companies next week.
On September 28, the US Army picked NVTS to develop a 10,000 volt chip using a manufacturing process not available in the US for power grids and big transformers in front of data centers; NVTS is also buying Claros to deliver power right underneath the chip.
NVTS management says the market is worth more than $8 billion by 2030; it is selling from the power line outside the building to the chip inside the server, but it is still small, not profitable, and the big 800-volt rollout is not until 2027.
NVTS catalysts are the OCP Global Summit on October 12th to the 15th and earnings in early November; the stock’s historical pattern is sharp drawdowns followed by big rebounds, with 12 prior 40%-plus drops and every one rebounding at least 44%, though about half later failed.
NVTS chart triggers: the 200-day is around 13.25, a close above $14.95 matters, the floor is around $10.27, and a close below $943 breaks the setup.
Sponsored: ZNA is pitched as a drone-services roll-up with 29 acquisitions, 14 US states plus Canada/UK/Australia, Q2 revenue of $9.3 million up 316%, first-half revenue of $17.7 million, and signed offers that could add about $40 million of revenue in the first 12 months after closing.