Goldman Says Nvidia and Micron Are the Biggest AI Winners: 5 Stocks to Take Advantage of it Now

Goldman Sachs named NVIDIA and Micron the biggest AI winners, reinforcing a bullish earnings-cycle setup across the AI supply chain. The article highlights strong results and raised outlooks from ASML, Broadcom, NVIDIA, TSMC, and Micron, including Micron up 214% YTD, NVIDIA up 15% YTD, ASML up 53% YTD, and TSMC up 36% YTD. Management commentary and buybacks are supportive, while analyst targets and order-book commentary point to continued demand strength.

Analysis

The real setup is not “AI winners” but the continued migration of bargaining power upstream into capacity-constrained infrastructure. When hyperscalers keep layering AI capex, the incremental economics flow first to the choke points with the tightest lead times: advanced lithography, foundry wafers, and HBM. That means the second-order winners are the names with the longest backlog visibility and the cleanest pricing power, while downstream chip designers are increasingly exposed to cycle normalization, customer concentration, and eventual substitution pressure.

The market’s biggest blind spot is that this is no longer a simple growth basket; it is a supply-chain scarcity trade with duration risk. If AI buildout decelerates even modestly in 2H, the highest-beta parts of the complex can rerate faster than fundamentals break, especially where expectations are already elevated and positioning is crowded. Conversely, the names with buybacks and strong gross margin durability can absorb a demand air pocket better than the market assumes.

The most interesting relative-value expression is long the physical bottlenecks versus short the more sentiment-sensitive beneficiaries. ASML and TSM offer slower but more durable earnings power because they monetize every design win regardless of which architecture wins share; Micron has the cleanest near-term operating leverage but also the highest cycle risk once HBM supply catches up; NVIDIA remains the highest-quality momentum asset, but it is also where any sign of pricing pressure will be punished first. Broadcom sits in the middle: less pure-spot exposure, more strategic hedge against a lower-NVIDIA-share world.

Contrarian view: the market may be underestimating how quickly supply additions can compress the supernormal margins in memory and some networking adjacencies by 2026. The more consensus this trade becomes, the more likely earnings beats turn into guide-tightens or multiple compression. The best risk-adjusted expression is to own the bottlenecks and avoid paying peak-cycle multiples for the most crowded winners unless entry is timed on post-earnings weakness.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Overweight ASML and TSM versus the broader AI basket into earnings season; both monetize capex regardless of which AI model winner emerges, and their lead times support 12-18 month visibility.
• Stay long NVDA but only on pullbacks or post-print consolidation; use the stock’s relative underperformance versus MU/ASML as a tactical entry signal, with a stop if pricing commentary or rental data keep deteriorating for 2-3 consecutive checks.
• Take partial profits in MU after the outsized move and replace with a call spread rather than outright equity; upside remains if HBM stays constrained, but the stock is the most exposed to 2026 supply normalization.
• Pair long AVGO / short a basket of AI beta names that rely on continued multiple expansion; AVGO benefits whether hyperscalers buy GPUs or custom silicon, making it the cleaner hedge against architecture mix shifts.
• If you want a relative-value hedge, short the most crowded AI beneficiaries on post-earnings strength against a long in ASML or TSM; this expresses the view that physical bottlenecks keep pricing power while sentiment-driven names are more vulnerable to disappointment.