Micron and Sandisk shook off an otherwise “meh” tech sector performance Monday after the two memory bellwethers received an analyst initiation.

It was a “buy” on both counts from Melius Research, adding to the growing consensus view that there’s no end in sight for data center-related storage demand as the AI capital-spending boom continues.

AI infrastructure and data center stocks are swooning on Monday after an exceptionally hot run, with the likes of Applied Optoelectronics, Lumentum, Astera Labs, Coherent, Marvell Technology, Nebius, IREN, and Applied Digital all off at least 3% as of 1:08 p.m. ET.

Most of these names didn’t fall in tandem on news of the amended agreement between Microsoft and OpenAI, but rather began to sharply extend losses shortly ahead of the open (by which time the Copilot creator was already well off its lows).

So it’s tough to cite that as a catalyst for the group. If you wanted to try to pigeonhole that as a cause of the decline: Microsoft and OpenAI’s simplified relationship points to a world where AI spend is increasingly rationalized by the underlying economics, with cash-burning behemoths forced to stand on their own two feet. That may ultimately restrain what appears to be the present eye-popping demand for AI infrastructure.

On the other hand, there have been myriad signs in recent weeks of just how intense supply crunches are across networking, CPUs, and AI accelerator chips as well as elevated end user appetite, so it’s difficult to suggest this is something fundamental as opposed to the space taking a breather ahead of hyperscalers’ earnings reports on Wednesday.

The capex budgets for Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google effectively serve as sales guidance for the rest of the AI ecosystem.

For some parts of the AI trade, Monday’s tape may be a reminder that parabolic moves don’t end by going sideways. For other core contributors to the 2025-26 advance, the skyward marches are still intact: Sandisk and Micron are zooming higher.

This is an own goal for the ages.

POET Technologies is cratering on Monday after announcing “the cancellation of all purchase orders received by the Company from Celestial AI, including the ones for initial production units first disclosed (the ‘Purchase Orders’) by the Company in a press release on April 25, 2023.”

Marvell Technology, which acquired Celestial AI, provided written notice of the cancellation on Thursday, citing “disclosures of information related to the Purchase Order and shipping information in contravention of its confidentiality obligations.”

We can zero in on the likely cause here — the interview that CFO Thomas Mika did with Stocktwits TV last week:

“We’re a supplier to Marvell now that they’ve acquired Celestial AI, who has been a customer of ours for a couple of years. And what we supply to Celestial AI are light sources — high-bandwidth, multi-frequency, high-power light sources that light up the photonic fabric that Celestial AI talks about as being the communication device between GPUs and one GPU and another GPU, a GPU and a memory device.”

Now, it’s likely that Mika provided a useful excuse for Marvell to cancel a contract it may not have wanted, thanks to its own in-house capabilities.

The worst part is: any reasonable person would have assumed that Marvell, through Celestial AI, was a customer of POET! The stock surged when Marvell acquired Celestial in December for that very reason!

On Friday, the day after POET received notice of the cancellation and one trading day before that information became public, a record $1.1 billion changed hands trading the stock. That high-water mark lasted only one session, with more than $1.3 billion in dollar volumes through 12:30 p.m. ET.

“The Company remains focused on executing its strategic priorities and advancing product development within the AI and optical networking markets to meet increasing demand,” per POET’s press release on Monday. “This effort also involves fulfilling product deliveries for other customers, including a recently disclosed purchase order with another technology company with a value of approximately $5 million.”

Qualcomm, the worst-performing member of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index this year which finally got its day in the spotlight on Friday, is basking in the sunshine once again. The San Diego-based firm is up 12% in early trading on Monday after an analyst said that the smartphone chip maker is partnering with OpenAI to build new custom processors for smartphones.

Per an X post from TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo late last night, OpenAI is working with Qualcomm, as well as MediaTek and Luxshare, to develop an AI agent phone, with plans for mass production to start in 2028.

Per Kuo, processors for the AI phone, which Qualcomm and MediaTek will partner to codevelop, will prioritize “power consumption, memory hierarchy management, and basic small-model execution,” in an effort to continuously understand the user’s context, while more complex or compute-intensive tasks will be handled by cloud AI. Specifications and suppliers for the processors are expected to be finalized by late 2026 or Q1 of 2027.

The reported partnership continues OpenAI’s ambitions to get into agentic AI hardware, after it announced in July 2025 that it’s building an AI device with Broadcom under the watch of Jony Ives, the former chief design officer at Apple.

Nuclear energy company X-Energy continued to rise in premarket trading on Monday after rushing out of the gate on its Nasdaq debut.

X-Energy shares closed 27% above their IPO price on Friday, its first day as a publicly listed company. Shares have risen another ~16% before the bell on Monday.

The company raised $1 billion for its IPO, with high-profile backers including Amazon and Ken Griffin, the founder of the hedge fund Citadel. X-Energy had a market capitalization of $11.6 billion as of Friday’s close.

The company uses modular nuclear reactors to produce energy for industrial facilities and data centers, joining a list of energy startups including Oklo and Fermi looking to profit from the artificial intelligence boom’s massive energy demand.

X-Energy, which counts Dow, Inc. and Amazon among its clients, reported $109.3 million in revenue in 2025 and a $390 million net loss for the year.

S&P 500 futures erased small losses on Sunday evening after Axios reported that Iran, through Pakistan, is offering a fresh proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the conflict. West Texas Intermediate futures are off their highs, but still up 1.6% as of 9:33 p.m. ET. According to Axios, this deal would punt the issue of Iran’s nuclear program to a later date.

This new potential off-ramp follows some less than encouraging news on the status of talks between the two sides. On Saturday, President Donald Trump said that he canceled a trip to Pakistan during which Steve Witkoff (special envoy to the Middle East) and Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law) had been expected to negotiate with Iran. On Sunday, Trump told Fox News that Iran “can come to us, or they can call us” if they want to talk.

The Strait of Hormuz, a key choke point for global oil flows, has been largely closed since the conflict started roughly two months ago, despite a ceasefire agreement that was said to be contingent on the reopening of this waterway. In addition to Iranian military threats, which initially made passage through the strait too dangerous for most vessels to attempt, the US has also recently started a naval blockade to limit Iranian oil exports.

Cable and broadband company Charter Communications is on pace for its worst-ever trading day on Friday, as investors dump the stock following its Q1 results and forward guidance.

Charter, which owns Spectrum, reported adjusted earnings of $9.17 per share, below Wall Street estimates of $9.96 per share from analysts polled by FactSet. On the company’s earnings call, CFO Jessica Fischer appeared to lower its guidance for full-year revenue per user.

“It’ll be close either way in terms of whether we end up with net growth,” Fischer said.

The company lost 120,000 internet subscribers in the quarter, deeper than the expected 94,800 and double its loss from the same period last year. That news comes one day after Comcast’s earnings provided a bit of optimism for broadband as a category: the company reported Q1 losses of 65,000, significantly improving from 183,000 losses in the same quarter last year. Comcast is down more than 10%, on pace for its worst day since January 2025.

The stock price of the company responsible for the brains of the AI boom is finally showing some brawn again.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, is poised to close at a record high for the first time since October 29, 2025, on Friday (if it ends above $207.04).

The AI chip trade is on fire, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index slated to deliver its 18th consecutive gain as Intel’s robust results and outlook juice the entire ecosystem. Hyperscalers report earnings next week, and their capex guidance can be thought of as the earnings guidance for Nvidia and other AI suppliers for the quarters to come.

This would end Nvidia’s longest stretch without a record close since the unofficial start of the AI boom (when the chip designer delivered blowout quarterly results in May 2023).

(Sorry if I jinx this!)

Eli Lilly fell on Friday after prescription data for its new weight-loss pill, Foundayo, showed that it’s having a significantly slower rollout than its top competitor.

The pill was prescribed about 3,700 times in its second week, according to IQVIA data cited by Deutsche Bank analysts, compared to the roughly 8,000 they were expecting. Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill, which came out in January, hit over 18,000 prescriptions in its second week.

The FDA approved Foundayo on April 1 and shipments began on April 9. Deutsche analysts noted that Lilly’s GLP-1 injections, which currently outsell Novo’s, also had a slower start.

Lilly fell more than 4% after the numbers were released. Novo Nordisk rose more than 5%.

If you’re a good host, even the last person who shows up to the party gets to have a good time.

On that note, beleaguered Qualcomm — the worst-performing member of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index this year — is staging a furious rally on Friday, with the industry poised to deliver its 18th consecutive session of gains.

Intel’s earnings are buoying the semi space broadly on Friday, and Qualcomm isn’t being left out. Options activity is also elevated and tilted toward the bull side. As of 9:56 a.m. ET, more than 48,000 calls have changed hands, roughly double its full-day average for the past 20 sessions. Its put/call ratio of 0.17 is well below the 20-day average of 0.44.

The San Diego-based firm has been negative in 2026 since the seventh session of the year, and even with today’s advance, remains mired in the red year to date. The stock cratered after reporting Q1 earnings in early February because its poor Q2 guidance seemingly confirmed fears that smartphone sales would come under pressure from rising memory chip prices and limited availability. Smartphone chips are still Qualcomm’s primary business, accounting for nearly two-thirds of revenues in its most recent quarter, and memory chip sellers appear to be incentivized to meet demand from major AI customers first.

Qualcomm reports Q2 earnings next Wednesday, but that release will likely be overshadowed by the four Magnificent 7 hyperscalers releasing results after the close.

TSMC’s ADRs jumped 3% in premarket trading on Friday after the island’s financial regulator announced plans to ease limits on funds’ allocations to single funds.

Previously, active fund managers were limited to allocating up to a maximum of 10% of their net assets into any one company. Under the revised framework, local equity funds and active exchange-traded funds that solely invest in Taiwanese stocks can allocate up to 25% of their assets in any listed company if it has a weighting above 10% in the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

The new rule, announced Thursday, will come into effect after the regulator issues an order on Friday. Relaxing the long-standing rule will mean fewer restrictions on local money managers taking full advantage of TSMC’s skyrocketing share price. TSMC, now Asia’s largest company by market cap, has seen its share price surge 150% in the past year — adding more to its gains in the last few days after crushing estimates in its first-quarter results.

TSMC is currently the only company that meets that 10% criterion, holding some 44% weight in Taiwan’s benchmark index, though the latest change also moved other large-cap Taiwanese stocks higher on Friday.

A strong set of Q1 results and Q2 guidance from Intel is sending shares of fellow CPU sellers Arm Holdings and Advanced Micro Devices about 6% and 4% higher in postmarket trading, respectively.

Intel’s robust report is seemingly a rising tide that lifts all boats in the industry, not just a company-specific dynamic.

Arm recently pivoted to designing and selling CPUs for data center customers (like Meta!) in addition to its long-standing business of licensing out the design architecture.

And AMD, of course, has been a well-established giant in the space before it ever started offering GPUs.

It’s the latest reminder that the AI boom isn’t just juicing demand for the most advanced chips, but also memory, older-school units, and a wide array of hardware.

Intel shares surged in after-hours trading Thursday after the semiconductor giant reported much better-than-expected Q1 earnings and sales numbers, as well as robust guidance for Q2.

Intel reported:

• Q1 revenue of $13.6 billion vs. a consensus expectation for $12.42 billion.

• Adjusted earnings per share of $0.29 vs. the $0.02 consensus estimate from FactSet.

• A forecast for Q2 sales of between $13.8 billion and $14.8 billion vs. analysts’ $13.11 billion expectation.

• A forecast for adjusted Q2 EPS of $0.20 vs. Wall Street expectations for $0.10.

“The next wave of AI will bring intelligence closer to the end user, moving from foundational models to inference to agentic. This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel’s CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in the company’s earnings release.

The quarterly result was clearly a surprise to both analysts and investors. Shares were up 15% shortly after the report in after-hours trading — despite having risen roughly 50% already in the month of April before the results were released.

Intel’s results could not be more different from the previous quarter. In its Q4 report, Intel issued lackluster guidance for Q1, which it blamed on a dearth of available silicon wafers it could use to make finished chips. The stock plunged 17% the next day.

“Intel was explicit on the Q4 call that they were living hand-to-mouth on wafers,” Cody Acree, a senior semiconductor analyst at brokerage firm Benchmark/StoneX, said in a brief phone interview with Sherwood News Thursday. “If this kind of upside was possible, than why the ultraconservative guidance?”

The Q1 results are a significant coda to what has been one of the best periods of share price performance for the company in decades. The stock has more than tripled over the last 12 months.

That run-up, however, had seemed to far outpace Intel’s actual business results, resulting in a nosebleed-inducing forward price-to-earnings valuation nearly 100x expected earnings over the next 12 months, dwarfing even the valuations the company was receiving during the peak of the dot-com boom of the 1990s. But the Q1 numbers suggest the market was picking up good vibrations that seem to have been borne out.