The artificial-intelligence trade came roaring back on Tuesday, as investors piled back into chip and memory stocks.

Memory card maker Sandisk was the S&P 500's best performer in premarket trading, jumping 7.5% to $1,496.

Chips and networking company Marvell rose 6.7%, memory-chip maker Micron gained 6%, and chip manufacturer Intel advanced 5.2% ahead of the opening bell.

Chip tool manufacturers Applied Materials, KLA Corp., and Lam Research, optical component suppliers Coherent and Lumentum, glassmaker Corning, and hard-drive makers Seagate and Western Digital were also rallying on Tuesday.

The moves suggest there may still be life in the AI trade, which has wobbled recently as amid fears over the threat posed by a slew of cheap Chinese chatbots.

Moonshot AI released a new large-language model last week. The model outperformed rival offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI at a fraction of the cost per token, calling into question how much longer the U.S. AI spending boom can last.

There wasn't an obvious factor driving the rebound on Tuesday, although investors may be taking the opportunity to buy the dip now that some of the market's most beloved tech stocks look a bit cheaper.

Sandisk may well be a bellwether for the entire AI trade. Its shares slumped 21% last week as fears about the slowdown in spending mounted.

Still, the stock was up 486% since the start of the year through Monday's close, driven higher by the surge in demand for flash memory products.