AI Stocks Jumped Last Week—Here’s What You Need to Know | Global News Avenue

AI stocks surged last week after Openai announced partnership With Oracle (ORCL) and SoftBank could invest up to half a million dollars in AI infrastructure over the next four years.

The investments announced Tuesday add to what tech giants have said they will spend over the next few years on data centers and other AI infrastructure. Microsoft(MSFTPresident Brad Smith said earlier this month that the company is “on track to invest approximately $80 billion in AI-powered data centers” in the fiscal year ending in June. competitor letters (GOOG)(GOOGL), Amazon (AHr) and meta-platform (Yuan) forecast investment at a similar scale.

That spending has fueled a huge rally in the stocks of companies offering artificial intelligence’s metaphorical “picks and shovels”: makers of semiconductors, servers and networking equipment, and power generators.

Below, we take a look at the weekly drama of Wall Street’s favorite AI plays and take a deeper look at the week’s top AI stocks.

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Ciena Corp. stock (Hundred), which sells networking hardware, software and services to telecom and cloud computing customers, surged 14% last week. Ciena is expected to benefit from widespread adoption of artificial intelligence applications, which should increase demand for its optical networking technology.

“As cloud and artificial intelligence drive demand for bandwidth across the network, we will gain accelerated revenue growth and market share expansion moving forward,” CEO Gary Smith said in the company’s most recent earnings report.

Bank of America analyst Tal Liani predicted earlier this month that Ciena would be a Genai beneficiary this year. He estimates that the company commands nearly 30% of the optical market share (excluding China) and accounts for nearly 50% of the 800-gram optical market. Liani expects the 800-gram modules to offer the largest bandwidth of any available optical module, “becoming more evident in 2025 and beyond to support Genai throughput and low latency needs.”

Liani is one of eight Wall Street analysts tracked by Visible Alpha who rates Ciena stock a “buy.” One analyst assigned it a “hold” rating. The average price target of $91.56 is 5% below Friday’s closing price.

Arista Network (Aneta), CIENA’s rival in the online space, also surged last week, rising 7.7%.

Overall power system

Overall Power System Stock (MP) jumped 8.4% last week.

The company designs and sells power management semiconductors for a variety of markets and sells balloons for its data centers as demand for artificial intelligence grows. In the third quarter of 2024, Monolithic reported an 86% increase in AI and cloud computing revenue. The business represents about 30% of total sales, up from 21% in the third quarter of 2023 and just 10% in 2021.

Deutsche Bank analysts earlier this month preferred list It also reiterated its Buy rating and $900 price target. They said overall should “continue to achieve solid AI-related growth” as the total addressable market expands. The stock should also benefit from a recovery in many of its other end markets, including autos and industrials, they said.

Of the 11 analysts tracking Monolithic’s Visible Alpha, ten rate the stock a Buy, while one assigns it a Hold rating. On Friday, the average price target was $822.91, which was 21% above the stock’s closing price.

Vistur

Shares of Vistra (vst) increased AI excitement by 11.9% last week.

Vistra owns and operates natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants as well as solar and energy storage assets. Second best stock Data center power demand surged during the S&P 500 last year. Top operators of nuclear power plants have benefited most from AI’s unlimited energy needs.

Yungao Standard has embraced nuclear energy as a carbon-free energy source for data centers and AI workloads. Microsoft inked a deal with Vistra competitor Constellation Energy in September (branch) arrive restart a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania, which powers its data centers. (Constellation Energy also surged last week, rising 9.8%.) Amazon October signed agreement There are several businesses and state utilities to support the development of small modular reactors.

All four Sticky analysts tracked by Visible Alpha rate the stock a Buy. Their average price target is $170.75, which is below Friday’s close.