NVIDIA, ranked first in Thursday's US stock trading volume, closed up 1.76% with a turnover of $35.16 billion. A report on Thursday indicated that Japan's SoftBank is seeking to develop and manufacture AI servers domestically, with plans to begin designing and assembling components by the end of the decade, assisted by major manufacturers such as NVIDIA and Foxconn. NVIDIA maintains a certification system for its GPU servers, while Foxconn is one of the world's leading contract manufacturers for AI servers.
Micron Technology, the second most traded stock, closed down 3.02% with a turnover of $30.408 billion. Despite a significant rise in Micron's stock price over the past year, Steve Cress, Head of Quantitative Research at Seeking Alpha, recently stated that the memory chip manufacturer remains attractive, citing a clear mismatch between its current valuation and growth prospects. Cress noted in a podcast that Micron's biggest investment highlight is its combination of "low valuation and high growth."
Tesla, ranked third, closed up 3.28% with a turnover of $25.919 billion. Tesla announced price reductions in the Canadian market, which attracted considerable attention in Canadian public discourse. Reports indicate the price cuts were substantial, with some models seeing prices nearly halved. Interestingly, many Canadian netizens expressed gratitude towards China. According to multiple Canadian and North American automotive industry reports from outlets like Driving.ca and Electrek, Tesla's significant price reduction in Canada is directly linked to China. These reports point out that a low-tariff import quota system for Chinese new energy vehicles, announced during Canadian Prime Minister's visit to China this January, is the primary reason enabling Tesla's major price cuts.
Ranked fourth, the stock closed down 4.97% with a turnover of $20.902 billion. The company reported third-quarter revenue and earnings that exceeded market expectations and provided strong fourth-quarter guidance; however, the stock declined as the positive news was already priced in. Third-quarter revenue was $5.95 billion, significantly surpassing the expected $4.72 billion; adjusted earnings per share were $23.41, also greatly exceeding the expected $14.51. Data center business revenue surged 645% year-over-year, becoming the core growth driver. For the fourth quarter, the company expects revenue between $7.75 billion and $8.25 billion and adjusted EPS between $30 and $33, both far exceeding prior market expectations. Since its spin-off from Western Digital and listing in February 2025, the stock has accumulated gains of over 3,300%, with a rise of approximately 360% in 2026 alone. The market had already priced in high expectations for AI-driven storage demand and the company's rapid growth. Goldman Sachs noted in a May 1st report that due to the stock's significant pre-earnings rally, investor expectations had risen markedly. The strong results and guidance failed to deliver an extra surprise beyond these lofty expectations, triggering profit-taking. The firm views the short-term decline more as a release of sentiment and positioning pressure rather than a fundamental issue.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), ranked fifth, closed down 3.07% with a turnover of $18.288 billion. Industry channel information indicates a significant price inversion phenomenon in the AMD graphics card market, where the actual selling price for several main models is lower than the distributors' purchase cost. This means distributors incur a loss on each card sold, rather than making a profit.
Intel, ranked seventh, closed down 3% with a turnover in the billions of dollars. The stock has risen approximately 200% year-to-date. Recent media reports stated that OpenAI, together with AMD, Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, jointly released a new open networking protocol called MRC (Multi-path Reliable Connection), which can help large AI training clusters run faster and more reliably. OpenAI released MRC through the Open Compute Project (OCP).
Qualcomm, ranked ninth, closed up 5.18% with a turnover of $10.418 billion. Qualcomm officially launched the fifth-generation Snapdragon 4 mobile platform, targeting entry-level smartphones to bring smoother performance and better gaming experiences to budget devices. The most significant improvement in this generation is enhanced responsiveness for daily use. It features a new smooth interface technology, increasing app launch speed by 43% compared to the previous generation and reducing screen stutter by 25%, making activities like scrolling and switching apps smoother.
Broadcom, ranked twelfth, closed down 3.03% with a turnover of $9.231 billion. OpenAI faces obstacles in its self-developed chip project: Broadcom is demanding that Microsoft purchase 40% of the production capacity. When OpenAI and chip design company Broadcom announced their joint development of custom AI chips last year, both parties viewed the cooperation as a done deal. Months later, according to an internal memo and two informed sources familiar with the negotiations, the parties are discussing having Broadcom fund the initial phase of chip production. This phase requires 1.3 gigawatts of data center computing capacity and is estimated to cost around $18 billion. Based on this cost, the full project, codenamed "Nexus" with a total scale of 10 gigawatts, would have a chip production cost alone of approximately $180 billion, not including data center construction and other associated expenses. Securing this financing is crucial for OpenAI. The developer of ChatGPT anticipates its operational capital expenditure will exceed $200 billion by 2029. Developing its own chips is a core part of OpenAI's strategy to reduce server costs and improve gross margins. However, negotiations have potentially reached an impasse. An OpenAI executive revealed in an internal memo last month that Broadcom explicitly stated it would only provide funding for the project's first phase if Microsoft agreed to purchase about 40% of the chip output. Microsoft would deploy these chips in its own data centers and then lease computing power to OpenAI. Sources involved in the talks said that Microsoft, with decades of data center operational experience and top-tier global creditworthiness, would give Broadcom confidence that its investment could be recouped once it makes a purchase commitment. The memo also noted that Microsoft might ultimately not purchase the custom chips, which would directly alter the project's financing terms. According to the memo and two negotiation sources, the proposed chip cooperation agreement has added a clause: if Microsoft's actual purchases fall short, OpenAI must find other buyers to take up the slack.
Lumentum Holdings, ranked fifteenth, closed down 5.48% with a turnover of $6.362 billion. The optical communications and photonics technology company stated that product demand continues to outpace supply capacity. Several Wall Street firms subsequently expressed optimistic views, suggesting that AI infrastructure construction is driving the industry into a new cycle of high growth.
AppLovin, ranked sixteenth, closed up 6.41% with a turnover of $6.123 billion. AppLovin reported first-quarter revenue of $1.842 billion, a 59% year-over-year increase, surpassing market expectations of $1.77 billion. Net profit grew 109% to $1.206 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $3.56, also exceeding the expected $3.44. The better-than-expected performance was primarily attributed to its AI advertising engine, AXON, which precisely matches users with relevant ads, thereby increasing returns for advertisers and boosting monetization for app publishers. The company forecasts second-quarter revenue between $1.92 billion and $1.95 billion, generally above market expectations of $1.89 billion.
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