Semiconductor stocks rise on Big Tech earnings, Qualcomm beat

What happened: Semiconductor stocks rose on Thursday. Qualcomm (QCOM) surged 9% in premarket trading, while peers Broadcom (AVGO), Intel (INTC), and AMD (AMD) climbed higher as well.

What’s behind the move: Big Tech earnings from companies like Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) showed hyperscalers plan to grow their capital expenditures on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Wall Street sees the makers of the central processing units (CPUs) needed for agentic AI, such as Intel and AMD, as beneficiaries of the trade. The cost of memory and data storage has also benefited players like Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital (WDC), and Seagate (STX), which rallied premarket following Seagate’s strong results.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s better-than-expected first quarter results also lifted the broader chip sector. The maker of smartphone processors said it sees the market for Chinese phones bottoming in the current quarter, a positive sign for the company. It also said it expects to ship custom silicon to an unnamed hyperscaler later this year.

What else you need to know: Semiconductor stocks have been on fire in recent weeks amid investors’ growing focus on agentic AI, in which bots or agents act on users’ behalf.

This week, Qualcomm surged roughly 15% after tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TF International Securities said that OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) is working with Qualcomm to develop smartphone processors.

Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre.

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