Nvidia and other chip stocks rise - but the AI trade may not be back for good

By Emily Bary and Britney Nguyen

Micron's outlook lifted AI stocks across the board on Thursday, but a more sustained catalyst may not arrive until next year

Nvidia's stock was up nearly 2% in Thursday's trading.

Some on Wall Street aren't buying that Thursday's artificial-intelligence rally will sustain, at least in the short run.

Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Oracle (ORCL) and a host of other AI stocks rose on Thursday, buoyed by Micron Technology's (MU) upbeat messaging and forecast. The memory-chip maker not only gave a quarterly revenue forecast late Wednesday that was some 30% above the consensus level, but it also talked up robust opportunities beyond that, as AI demand continues to pour in.

Don't miss: Micron just had its Nvidia moment. What comes next for the stock?

The commentary was welcome news for investors in AI stocks, which have been weighed down in recent weeks largely due to debt concerns. Many AI companies are betting big on future business with OpenAI, but Wall Street has become more jittery about the ChatGPT maker's potential to see through its ambitious plans in the future. Meanwhile, in the present, trendy players like Oracle and CoreWeave (CRWV) are leveraging up to finance their AI buildouts.

Yet Mizuho trading-desk analyst Jordan Klein on Thursday wrote that he was "not here calling for a massive reversal" in chip stocks and other AI capital-expenditure beneficiaries, even after Micron's strong report.

"I have no clue when that happens," but it's probably more of a 2026 dynamic, he said.

What Klein thinks needs to happen is for new large language models that train on Nvidia's Blackwell chips to "offer major improvements vs. anything we have seen to date." He noted that they specifically need to show better outcomes than Google's (GOOGL) (GOOG) Gemini, which was trained on the company's in-house tensor processing units co-developed alongside Broadcom (AVGO).

Read: Broadcom and these chip stocks make J.P. Morgan's list of top picks

"I am as confident as ever in the AI capex beneficiaries coming back strong to make new highs again," Klein wrote. But in the meantime, there's been a rotation out of major technology winners and into other corners of the market - one that Klein deemed to be healthy for overall market dynamics.

Joe Mazzola, head trading and derivatives strategist at Charles Schwab, also noted that Micron's report was lifting AI-linked stocks across the board Thursday - including energy names like Constellation (CEG) and highflying software names like Palantir (PLTR), which were up 5.9% and 4.7%, respectively.

"But one day isn't necessarily going to change the overall pattern of investors moving out of tech and into other sectors, something evident in the fact that 63% of S&P 500 SPX stocks have outperformed the index over the last month even as the market-cap-weighted index itself has fallen," Mazzola said in emailed comments.

Nvidia and AMD shares were up 1.9% and 1.5%, respectively, on Thursday. Broadcom's stock gained 1.2%, while Oracle shares rose 0.9%.

Micron's strong earnings results are a reminder that demand for AI computing is still far outpacing supply, D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said. While some of the demand drivers are specific to Micron's role as a memory-chip maker, "they are also an indication of an accelerating rate of purchasing," he said in emailed comments.

Investors already got that message from Nvidia and hyperscale cloud companies that reported results over the past two months, but Micron's report "comes at an opportune time as the narrative around AI has turned negative," Luria said.

Micron's report itself might not be enough to turn negative sentiment about the AI trade around, he added, but it serves as a reminder to investors that AI winners still exist, "even as debt-laden overextensions" in the market, such as Oracle and CoreWeave, spur investor concerns.

See more: CoreWeave and Nebius shares rebound. Were debt fears too extreme?

-Emily Bary -Britney Nguyen

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12-18-25 1651ET