This week, as Anthropic and OpenAI successively reported impressive financial data, and Nvidia provided a $100 billion guarantee for data center construction, the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has been injected with 'new vitality.' The U.S. stock memory sector staged a strong rebound, driving the chip index to 'return to a bull market.'
On Monday, Micron Technology's stock price rose 4.13%, marking its fifth consecutive day of gains—the longest winning streak since January this year—with a cumulative increase of 17.5% over five days.
On the same day, SanDisk's stock price surged 8.88%, SK Hynix rose 3.04%, Western Digital increased by 5.4%, and Seagate Technology climbed 2.2%. Driven by the rally in Japanese stocks, Kioxia's ADR also skyrocketed 13.44% on Monday. Teradyne and Applied Materials also gained over 5%.
Led by the memory sector, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) experienced a bear market that lasted only 21 days, the shortest since March 2020. On Monday, the index closed up 1.6% at 12,621 points, rebounding more than 20% from its July 29th low, returning to a technical bull market.
Leading Large Model Companies 'Steer the Course'
According to informed sources on Monday, Anthropic's annualized revenue (projecting a full year's revenue based on short-term income, commonly used for rapidly growing AI companies) had reached $650 billion by the end of July.
Furthermore, internal documents obtained by media also show that Anthropic's actual revenue in the second quarter of this year exceeded $115 billion, compared to just $7.87 billion in the same period of 2025. More importantly, Anthropic's adjusted operating profit also turned positive in Q2. According to previous news, the company is set for a U.S. IPO as early as 'September or early October.'
Separately, as reported by media last Friday, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told investors that the company's enterprise business revenue has surpassed its consumer side, with annualized revenue reaching $400 billion. OpenAI also previously filed IPO documents confidentially, but there are no clear rumors of an exact listing date at the moment.
The rapid revenue growth of Anthropic and OpenAI clearly indicates their long-term compute leasing contracts are secure, meaning data centers can continue to thrive. Mizuho trading desk analyst Jordan Klein pointed out in a client note that the 'positive financial updates' from these two companies are the most important near-term catalyst for chip stocks, with both accelerating towards IPOs.
Klein stated that the market's consensus for Anthropic's full-year recurring revenue in 2024 is between $750 billion and $1 trillion, with reports suggesting this figure could climb to the $1.8-$2 trillion range by the end of next year. This will translate into 'substantial' procurement demand for AI chips, memory components, networking equipment, and other data center hardware.
Nvidia 'Provides Safeguards'
Last Monday, Nvidia formally reached agreements with several top Wall Street financial institutions aimed at raising massive funds to help its clients finance computing power purchases. The goal of these companies is to deploy over $500 billion in external capital in the coming years.
In simple terms, large corporations leverage their high credit ratings to help lower financing costs for their clients. Nvidia will play the role of a collaborative lead arranger, not a capital provider.
This Monday, according to the latest reports, OpenAI has signed a 10-gigawatt data center leasing agreement with SoftBank's SB Energy, receiving partial support from Nvidia. The project, located in Ohio, USA, is poised to become one of the largest AI data center campuses to date.
Informed sources revealed that Nvidia will provide support for the project through a commitment to help SB Energy raise debt financing, while avoiding excessive risk exposure for itself.
Nvidia's move to 'backstop' deals everywhere indicates the data center construction boom will continue. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang previously posted on social media platform X that his company might offer a residual value support mechanism of up to 25% for relevant opportunities, depending on the specific case.
He wrote: 'Our job is to help unlock a significant amount of independent capital while maintaining strict risk exposure.'
Analysis points out that Nvidia is promoting this mechanism because AI infrastructure investments are becoming increasingly capital-intensive. Large GPU clusters and data centers often require tens of billions of dollars or more, and investment institutions are most concerned about the rapid pace of equipment updates. Once a new generation of GPUs quickly becomes mainstream, the resale value of older equipment could plummet, potentially lengthening the investment payback period.
Therefore, Nvidia providing partial residual value support essentially lowers the barrier for capital entering the computing power infrastructure, while also further stimulating GPU procurement and data center construction.
More notably, this isn't just a simple 'backstop' scheme. Nvidia is attempting to further package AI computing power from hardware resources into assets capable of generating stable cash flows, facilitating participation from large asset management institutions and opening up financing channels such as equity and debt.
SanDisk 'Adds Fuel to the Fire'
SanDisk has also been one of the 'contributors' in this round of rebound.
Last week, SanDisk held an Investor Day, presenting encouraging long-term performance guidance. The company anticipates revenue growth rates in the range of 15% to 10% during fiscal years 2028 to 2030 (its fiscal year ends in late June or early July).
According to CFO Luis Visoso, SanDisk expects adjusted gross margins to remain around 80% in the same period. The company noted that this figure is primarily driven by its commitments to customers and strict supply control. SanDisk has signed new business model agreements (NBM) with eight customers. These are multi-year supply agreements that include committed supply volumes and structured pricing, enabling SanDisk to better align customer demand with production capacity.
This is also good news for Micron, as it indicates robust demand across the memory market and that shortages may not end soon. SanDisk focuses on flash storage for long-term demand, while Micron sells high-bandwidth memory and DRAM, which are in high short-term demand for smartphones and computers to run smoothly.
Historically, however, the memory industry has been a cyclical one. Strong demand and tight supply drive up prices and margins, attracting more capacity until oversupply eventually leads to price declines. But SanDisk's Investor Day seemed to suggest a new possibility.
On August 17th, Bank of America reaffirmed its 'Buy' rating on Micron Technology with a price target of $1550, noting that SanDisk's recent Investor Day might indicate the memory industry is entering a more durable phase, distinct from the cyclical boom-and-bust alternations of the past.
Analyst Vivek Arya pointed out that SanDisk's target of 15% annual sales growth, coupled with its outlook of maintaining gross margins above 80% until 2030, supported by new customer agreements and supply strategies, provides a valuation framework for 'how investors might ultimately view memory stocks.'
This article is from the WeChat public account 'Sci-Tech Innovation Board Daily,' author: Huang Junzhi
