After this year’s winners in memory, storage, custom silicon, optical links, cybersecurity and semiconductor equipment have already exploded, what are the next adjacent layers that could become 2027’s SNDK/MU/STX/MRVL/ALAB-type recognition trades?
The answer is not “more Nvidia.” The pattern in this year's top-20 list is that markets repeatedly discover the next bottleneck in the AI buildout: first compute, then memory/storage, then custom silicon, then high-speed interconnects and optical components, then testing and fab equipment. The next hunting ground is the infrastructure needed to connect, cool, power, house, and operationalize all of that capacity.
What your list tells us
Your leaders group into a few clear bottlenecks:
| Already recognized bottleneck | This year’s winners | What the market has learned |
|---|---|---|
| Memory and storage | SNDK, MU, STX, WDC | AI needs far more HBM, DRAM, NAND, and data retention than conventional models assumed |
| AI compute/custom silicon | INTC, AMD, ARM, MRVL | GPUs do not capture every workload; CPUs, custom ASICs, IP, and accelerator supply matter |
| Interconnect / optics | LITE, ALAB, MRVL | AI racks and clusters are constrained by the ability to move data at 800G and 1.6T speeds |
| Test and fab tools | TER, AMAT, LRCX, ASML | A chip supercycle needs capacity, advanced packaging, inspection, and yield |
| AI security / observability | FTNT, PANW, CRWD, DDOG | More distributed AI workloads create security, traffic, and monitoring demand |
So I would look one or two layers past the winners—not in a company merely saying “AI,” but in the company whose product becomes mandatory when 800G/1.6T networking, HBM, optical switching, and multi-gigawatt data-center deployments scale.
AI-infrastructure beneficiaries now make up roughly 36% of the Russell 1000 Growth Index, which is precisely why the next winners are more likely to be niche suppliers outside the obvious mega-cap group. [1485]
First-tier candidates
Credo Technology (CRDO): the direct “next Astera/Lumentum” candidate
If the list is full of ALAB, LITE, MRVL, and networking winners, CRDO is perhaps the clearest adjacent name to investigate.
