AI Demand Boosts Semiconductor Sales: 3 Mutual Funds to Buy - Zacks Investment Research

The growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly boosted semiconductor sales, with global semiconductor revenue rising for the 14th consecutive month in April 2024, according to t... Read original →

The AI compute arms race is triggering a deep restructuring of the semiconductor stack: sub-3nm nodes intensify reliance on ASML’s EUV tools, making lithography a geopolitical chokepoint; meanwhile, surging HBM and advanced packaging demands force synchronized upgrades across equipment, materials, and OSATs. While U.S. export controls temporarily boost TSMC (Taiwan, China) and Samsung’s fab utilization, they inflate global supply chain redundancy costs and accelerate China’s pivot toward Chiplet and RISC-V alternatives. Facing NVIDIA’s dominance in AI training, AMD and Intel are countering with open ecosystems and edge-AI efficiency gains, while SMIC targets IoT and 6G RF chips as a flanking strategy. Over the next 18 months, capital will shift from pure logic scaling to integrated ‘AI + memory + interconnect’ innovation—precisely the systemic upside these Zacks-highlighted funds are positioned to capture.