Why the AI bull market's obsession shifted away from Nvidia to memory chip makers

Chipmaker stocks have exploded over the past month, with Micron up 80%, SanDisk up 52%, and Intel up 85%, to name just a few companies participating in the rally. Behind the surge is an evolving systems architecture for AI known as "orchestration" in which workloads are distributed through multiple processing channels rather than concentrated in bigger, more centralized blocks. Orchestration requires a greater number of more traditional central processing units (CPUs) relative to beefier graphics processing units (GPUs), which drove Nvidia's rise during the first phase of the AI buildout. While GPUs will remain essential for core AI tasks like model training and query response, Wall Street thinks the orchestration-driven proportions in chip demand are set to continue as AI software becomes "agentic" – that is, better at handling more generalized instructions. MU NVDA 1Y mountain Micron vs. Nvidia, 1 year "We believe agentic AI will increase the CPU-to-GPU mix in AI systems by adding more orchestration, memory, and tool-use work," Morgan Stanley analyst Shawn Kim and colleagues wrote in a Monday note to investors. …