SanDisk laid out an aggressive long-term financial model at its 2026 investor day, telling investors it expects mid- to high-double-digit revenue growth from fiscal 2028 through fiscal 2030, alongside roughly 80% non-GAAP gross margin and about 75% operating margin. The company also said it would manage sellable bit output based on profitability rather than volume alone, and return 100% of excess cash to shareholders after funding business investment needs. The market reacted quickly. SanDisk rose as much as 17.6% intraday on Thursday and finished up nearly 14%. Other storage names moved higher as well, with SK Hynix and Western Digital up more than 7%, Seagate Technology up nearly 5%, and Micron Technology gaining more than 4%. Management also pointed to a shift in the NAND business model. SanDisk said it has signed new business model agreements with eight customers, covering about 50% of fiscal 2027 bit shipments and about two-thirds of fiscal 2028 bit shipments. The company tied its confidence to AI inference demand, projected enterprise data center flash TAM at 1.2 zettabytes by 2030, and highlighted work on high-bandwidth flash and newer BiCS technologies.

Gao Yi Asset’s latest U.S. equity filing for the end of the second quarter has drawn attention to a broader shift in positioning across artificial intelligence-related stocks. According to statistics cited from Simuwang, Gao Yi’s offshore fund held 19 U.S. stock names at quarter-end, with a total market value of about $979 million, or roughly RMB 6.6 billion. The biggest move was a sharp increase in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which was raised from Gao Yi’s third-largest holding to its top position at $238 million, accounting for about 24% of total U.S. holdings. The filing also showed notable additions to Kanzhun, operator of Boss Zhipin, and Trip.com, with share counts up 175% and 53%, respectively. In memory, Gao Yi lifted its Micron position by more than 283% and its SanDisk stake by about 192%, while Dongfang Harbor’s offshore fund also initiated a new SanDisk position worth more than $200 million at quarter-end. At the same time, several private funds moved the other way on Nvidia. Gao Yi cut its Nvidia stake by more than 70%, Jinglin Asset exited completely, and Dongfang Harbor reduced its holding by about 15.7%. The article argues this does not amount to a rejection of the AI theme. Instead, it reflects a shift from expectation-driven pricing toward earnings and cash-flow delivery, with funds rotating from crowded AI design names into manufacturing and memory segments seen as tighter bottlenecks in the supply chain.

NeoCloud stocks such as CoreWeave and Nebius have emerged as one of the strongest groups in the latest U.S. tech rebound, according to MarsBit, as investors place a premium on contracted AI compute capacity that can be delivered quickly. The article argues that the market is no longer focused only on access to GPUs. What matters more now is whether a provider can combine GPUs, power, data center buildout, networking and operations into clusters that can go live within months. That shift changes how investors view these businesses. Revenue tied to multi-year capacity contracts, minimum commitments and, in some cases, customer prepayments is being treated less like ordinary IT services and more like infrastructure-style cash flow. Recent earnings helped reinforce that view. CoreWeave reported $2.575 billion in Q2 revenue and disclosed roughly $104 billion in backlog, while Nebius said its AI Cloud ARR reached $3 billion and pointed to several large long-term contracts. MarsBit says the appeal comes from three layers of leverage: operating leverage from high fixed-cost assets, financing leverage supported by long-term contracts, and equity leverage because a large new contract can sharply alter revenue expectations, utilization and access to capital. Investors are also watching power capacity closely, arguing that usable electricity and deliverable data center space remain harder to scale quickly than GPUs themselves.

Hong Kong-based GF Securities said in its August technology sector report that the July pullback in AI-linked stocks is close to ending, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index seeing its forward P/E fall to 27x and crowded leveraged positions largely cleared out. The firm added AMD, Foxconn and Lumentum to its preferred list while removing United Microelectronics, MediaTek and ASML, arguing that current leadership is concentrated in GPU, CPU and optics rather than mature-node foundry, smartphone chips or front-end lithography. GF Securities also said supply-chain capital is rotating away from memory components toward optical interconnects, with near-packaged optics and co-packaged optics emerging as the next focus. It projected U.S. cloud service providers’ capital expenditure growth at 85% in 2026, 45% in 2027 and about 20% in 2028, while estimating debt issuance at $257 billion in 2026 and $419 billion in 2027. The report said net leverage should still stay around 0.5x by 2029. At the same time, it kept a cautious near-term view on smartphones and warned that NAND oversupply could begin to surface in the second half of 2027.

U.S. stocks closed mixed after July consumer inflation data came in as expected, easing immediate concern that price pressures were reaccelerating. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.04% for a third straight loss, while the S&P 500 rose 0.26% and the Nasdaq gained 0.54%. According to the report, July CPI rose 0.1% month over month and 3.4% year over year, while core CPI increased 0.2% on the month and 2.5% on the year, with the core annual reading marking its slowest pace since March 2021. Money markets subsequently cut the probability of a September rate hike to 40%, with odds of no change climbing to about 60%. The market’s leadership also shifted sharply. Capital moved out of traditional software and some mega-cap tech names and into AI infrastructure, semiconductors, storage and optical communications. NEBIUS jumped 34.14%, CoreWeave rose 19.28%, Super Micro Computer climbed 19.02% and Lumentum added 13.63%. The report also highlighted continued strength in gold and silver, a pullback in crude after a recent surge, and mounting pressure from the U.S. fiscal deficit and interest burden. Investors are now watching July PPI, upcoming 13F filings and earnings from several technology and semiconductor companies for the next directional cues.

Morgan Stanley’s August global technology webinar tied memory, hyperscaler financing and SpaceX into a single theme: capital formation around AI infrastructure is changing both funding structures and pricing logic across semiconductors and communications. In memory, the bank highlighted three main points — how long-term agreements, or LTAs, are replacing spot-driven pricing, where the current cycle stands, and what rising inventories actually mean this time. The report outlined more explicit LTA targets and disclosures from major suppliers. Samsung said 60% to 70% of capacity is planned for rolling five-year LTAs, with five agreements signed and five in final negotiations. Micron is targeting more than 50% of revenue under LTAs and has received about $22 billion in prepayments and commitments. The note also cited SK hynix, SanDisk and Kioxia as expanding contract coverage. Morgan Stanley said 3Q26 DRAM contract prices rose about 15% quarter over quarter, below an earlier 20% expectation, while NAND rose about 20% with momentum easing. Even so, the bank argued this does not mark the end of the cycle. It also said higher inventory levels look different from 2018 and 2022 because customers are building stock under binding contracts with prepayments and minimum commitments. Beyond memory, the report used SpaceX and credit-market data to argue that large technology companies are increasingly using their balance sheets to support AI supply-chain financing.

Bernstein has raised its global wafer fab equipment, or WFE, spending forecasts for 2026 through 2028 and says the current upcycle in chip equipment spending still has room to run. The firm now expects WFE to reach $148 billion in 2026, $204 billion in 2027, and $259 billion in 2028, up from prior estimates of $141 billion, $175 billion, and $198 billion. That implies cumulative growth of 75% over two years. The upgrade spans most applications and regions, but Bernstein said the larger contribution comes from memory outside China and from foundry and logic spending in China. DRAM and NAND are expected to post the fastest growth, outpacing logic and foundry. For 2027, Bernstein forecasts DRAM WFE at $69 billion, NAND at $20 billion, and logic/foundry at $104 billion, each above its earlier projections. The report also points to stronger-than-expected resilience in China. Bernstein forecasts China WFE demand at $57 billion in 2026, $57.3 billion in 2027, and $101 billion in 2028, with a sharp step-up tied to broad capacity expansion across memory, advanced logic, and mature logic. It also said recent pullbacks in semiconductor equipment stocks have created more attractive entry points, while warning that the views, ratings, and price targets cited are those of Bernstein analysts and do not constitute investment advice.

U.S. markets opened the Wednesday premarket session in positive territory ahead of a closely watched Consumer Price Index reading, with investors focusing on a heavy flow of AI- and semiconductor-related updates. According to Bitget market data cited by BlockBeats, Dow futures rose 0.14%, Nasdaq futures gained 0.71%, and S&P 500 futures added 0.28%. WTI crude climbed 0.64%, while gold was up 0.61%. The premarket news slate was dominated by AI. Elon Musk said AI revenue would surpass all other SpaceX business revenue in September and claimed AI could account for 99% of SpaceX’s valuation within five years. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix were reported to be weighing what could become their largest-ever shareholder return programs, with market discussion centering on a combined package that may exceed KRW 200 trillion. Nvidia is aiming to place its next-generation Nemotron 4 among the world’s strongest open models, with employees involved in the project expecting the largest version to carry at least 1 trillion total parameters. Other key items included SanDisk’s August 13, 2026 investor day following its separation from Western Digital, Google’s statement that Gemini has surpassed 1 billion monthly active users, and upbeat earnings from CoreWeave, Lumentum, and NEBIUS. Separately, Senator Bernie Sanders sent letters to the CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta Platforms, urging them to honor prior public commitments to pause AI development and warning that Congress would step in if needed.