AMD and Intel power AI chip rally as Wall Street upgrades accelerate CPU-for-inference trade, SOXX +4.3%

Advanced Micro Devices surged 7.7% on June 30 after Wells Fargo raised its price target to $615, triggering a broad semiconductor bid that pushed the VanEck Semiconductor ETF up 4.3% on the final trading day of Q2 2026, its best quarterly performance in six years. The S&P 500 gained 0.79% to close at 7,499, the Nasdaq Composite climbed 1.52% to 26,214, and the chip sector dominated volume and price action as the CPU-for-AI-inference thesis rippled across the sector.

Today's biggest movers

AMD surges 7.7% as Wall Street reprices the CPU-for-inference trade

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD) closed at $580.91 on Tuesday, its largest single-day gain in several weeks, after Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers raised his price target to $615. The note argued that hyperscalers are increasingly routing AI inference workloads to CPU-based infrastructure at the edge and in cost-sensitive data center tiers, a shift that benefits AMD's EPYC server line and its growing Instinct GPU portfolio simultaneously. Several desks reduced short exposure into quarter-end following the publication.

Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya reiterated a Buy and lifted his 12-month target to $560 from $500, while Citi analyst Atif Malik upgraded AMD outright from Neutral to Buy with a $575 target and described its inference positioning as "underappreciated by the market." AMD posted Q1 2026 adjusted earnings per share of $1.37, beating the $1.29 consensus, and revenue of $10.25 billion, up 37.8% year-on-year, ahead of the $9.90 billion estimate. The next earnings report is scheduled for August 4, and today's analyst target increases raise the bar for the Q2 print considerably. AMD has now returned 160% since January 1.

Intel gains 6% as the inference trade lifts legacy chip names

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) closed at $139.63, up 6.01%, as the same CPU-for-inference narrative that drove AMD higher lifted its rival simultaneously. Cantor Fitzgerald raised its price target on Intel to $150 from $90, the most aggressive single-session move on the stock this quarter. The Wells Fargo AMD note explicitly identified a market shift away from GPU-only inference architectures, a thesis that traders immediately applied to Intel, whose high-core-count Xeon server CPUs compete directly in the workload segment Rakers identified.

Intel management has guided second-quarter 2026 revenue of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion. At $139.63, the stock trades well above the average analyst price target of $98.50; momentum and re-rating dynamics, rather than fundamental consensus, are the dominant force. Intel has gained 254% year-to-date, making it the second-best performer in our 25-stock universe. The gap between current price and analyst consensus is the principal risk variable heading into the July earnings season.

ASML and Lam Research push chip equipment to multi-week highs

ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ: ASML) closed at $1,989.44, up 5.65%, as two large price target increases landed simultaneously. Wells Fargo analyst Joe Quatrochi raised his target to $2,200 from $1,750 with an Overweight rating; Bank of America followed to $2,345 from $2,268 with a Buy. Both notes emphasised a multi-year EUV capacity expansion cycle among ASML's key customers as AI chip density requirements push lithography intensity higher. ASML had spent much of June pulling back from its May highs alongside broader sector volatility; Tuesday's close suggests the correction may be complete, with the stock having gained 71% year-to-date.

Lam Research Corp. (NASDAQ: LRCX) added 5.46% to $433.33, extending a year-to-date gain of 134% reinforced by its addition to the Russell Top 50 Index in June. Bank of America raised Lam's target to $480 and Cantor Fitzgerald set a new $500 target, both citing accelerating capital intensity in memory fabrication as HBM supply expansions drive wafer-fab spending. As covered in the June 29 recap, Applied Materials and Lam have been the chip equipment sector's two dominant headline movers throughout the month.

TSMC extends its quarter-end rally; Datadog breaks out on an analyst upgrade

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (NYSE: TSM) gained 4.94% to $477.57, lifting its year-to-date return to 49% and its twelve-month return to 103%. Bank of America analyst Haas Liu, who raised his price target to $590 from $490 on June 24, projects TSMC revenue growing 40% year-on-year in 2026 as advanced-node capacity fills faster than expected on AI chip orders. Quarter-end rebalancing added mechanical buying pressure on the final day of what is shaping up as one of TSMC's strongest quarters on record.

Datadog Inc. (NASDAQ: DDOG) closed at $260.36, up 4.74%, after Truist analyst Miller Jump upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold and set a $300 price target, up from $190, describing Datadog's observability platform as the "default telemetry layer" for enterprises running large language models in production. TD Cowen also raised its target to $260 from $235. Datadog reported Q1 2026 revenue of $1.006 billion, up 32% year-on-year, with earnings per share beating consensus by more than 100%. Full-year guidance was set at $4.30 billion to $4.34 billion.

Notable but quieter

Applied Materials Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT) gained 4.08% to $723.00, building on a month in which it has advanced 57.8%. Jefferies raised its price target to $770 from $510 following an advanced packaging investor event; Susquehanna analyst Mehdi Hosseini set a $900 target from $575. Chief executive Gary Dickerson sold roughly 103,000 shares in mid-June at prices between $590 and $599, which analysts viewed as a cautionary signal as the stock approaches historically overbought territory. NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) gained 2.63% to $200.09 on heavy volume of 163 million shares, its first close back above $200 in several sessions. Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: PANW) rose 2.72% to $341.02 and CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWD) added 2.72% to $763.14, both benefiting from quarter-end rotation into AI-adjacent security. Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) closed up 1.42% at $377.75.

Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) shed 0.82% to $146.55, extending a one-month decline of 41%, while Salesforce Inc. (NYSE: CRM) slipped 0.80% to $156.66; both remain the deepest year-to-date laggards in the universe, down 25% and 38% respectively. Their sustained underperformance relative to hardware was a defining theme of the quarter, most recently examined in the June 26 recap.

What to watch tomorrow

The first full week of July opens with the ISM Manufacturing PMI on Wednesday and nonfarm payrolls on Friday; any payrolls weakness that shifts Federal Reserve rate expectations would add a new variable to semiconductor valuations, where stretched multiples depend in part on a low discount rate. AMD's Q2 earnings are scheduled for August 4, and today's trio of analyst target increases raises the bar meaningfully for that print. TSMC reports June monthly revenue in the second week of July and is expected to confirm continued acceleration in CoWoS advanced-packaging orders. Gartner projects full-year 2026 semiconductor revenue of $1.3 trillion; July reporting season will test how much of that landed in Q2 versus the second half.

Not investment advice.