On July 6th, driven by persistently strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware technology and multiple positive industry expectations, the U.S. stock market's semiconductor sector reversed its weak performance from the previous week, experiencing a comprehensive rebound. Key stocks across the memory chip and custom chip supply chains collectively rose, indicating a significant recovery in market confidence regarding the global semiconductor industry's outlook.
Industry analysts point out that the concentrated moves by global memory chip giants this week were the core catalyst for this sectoral rebound. South Korean semiconductor giant Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is expected to release its preliminary second-quarter earnings report on July 7th local time. Market sources indicate that due to a severe supply shortage of high-performance chips driven by AI applications, Samsung plans to raise the average selling price of its dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips substantially by 20%. Concurrently, another major South Korean memory chip giant, SK Hynix Inc., is preparing to officially list on the Nasdaq market this Friday, with plans to raise up to $29 billion through an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) offering. Currently, Samsung, SK Hynix, and U.S.-based Micron Technology, Inc. collectively dominate the core production capacity for global high-bandwidth memory (HBM), with their technology and output being crucial for the supply chain security of leading AI chip companies like NVIDIA Corporation.
Boosted by these multiple positive factors, the U.S. memory chip segment performed strongly on Monday. Micron Technology, Inc. shares surged as much as 4% intraday, ultimately closing up 1%; Western Digital Corporation and Seagate Technology Holdings plc rose sharply by over 7% and 5%, respectively. In the computing infrastructure and custom chip arena, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) shares soared more than 6%, Marvell Technology, Inc. gained 1.6%, and NVIDIA Corporation also closed slightly higher.
Furthermore, deep supply chain integration further solidified market confidence. Wireless communications and semiconductor giant Broadcom Inc. announced that it has expanded its cooperation agreement with Apple Inc., extending its contract to supply custom chips until 2031 to secure chip supply for future "multiple generations" of core products like the iPhone. This news propelled Broadcom shares up nearly 4% on the day, while Apple shares also rose 1.3%.
Commenting on this market performance, analyst Gil Luria from D.A. Davidson noted that ahead of key information releases from the two major South Korean chip giants, capital is accelerating its return to the semiconductor industry, with a clear "cyclical return" of optimistic sentiment. Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, Head of Global Equities at UBS, emphasized that within the global wave of AI infrastructure development, semiconductor equipment, wafer foundries, central processing unit (CPU) computing architectures, and memory chips, as core foundational supports, maintain solid long-term investment value.