Key insights
- The author identifies several phases of the AI hype cycle, highlighting companies that have benefited from each phase, including compute, memory, physical infrastructure, optical interconnect, and inference. The post suggests that identifying under-the-radar beneficiaries in the current AI cycle could yield significant returns, implying continued growth and investment in AI-related sectors.
So, I've identified a few phases/subsectors of the current AI hype cycle since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022:
- The Compute Arms Race (Nov 2022 - early 2024)
NVDA ca 22x; SMCI 15x, TSM 5x
1.5 The Memory Wall (mid-2023 - now)
SNDK 25x, MU 10x, WDC 10x, SK Hynix 16x
- The Physical Bottlneck (late 2023 -mid 2025)
VRT 26x, VST 7x, CEG 4x
2.5 The Optical Interconnect Phase (Nov 2022 - now)
LITE 20x, COHR 11x, AAOI 87x
3 The Inference & Agentic Buildout (Nov 2022 - now)
PLTR 30x, ANET 5x, NBIS 8x
The stock selection is not exhaustive.
Do you have any ideas of under-the-radar, around-the-corner beneficiaries of the current AI cycle that would be good candidates for Nx performance?