3 Stocks Crushing Nvidia This Year

Nebius is up about 149% in 2026, Micron about 225%, and Taiwan Semiconductor about 33%, all outperforming Nvidia's roughly 15% gain. The article cites Nebius Q1 revenue growth of 684% year over year and management's $7B-$9B annual run-rate target for year-end, while Micron expects its HBM TAM to grow from $35B in 2025 to $100B by 2028. The piece is bullish on AI-linked demand and suggests continued upside for these names, though it is primarily commentary rather than new company-specific catalyst news.

Analysis

The market is increasingly rewarding the AI supply chain nodes with the most torque to capex scarcity, but the ranking matters: NBIS and MU are not just “AI beneficiaries,” they are the cleanest expressions of unresolved bottlenecks. Nebius is a pure-duration trade on cloud capacity hunger; if it keeps compounding at this pace, the stock’s multiple is being justified less by current revenue and more by the option value of becoming a scaled infrastructure layer. That makes it vulnerable to any sign of customer concentration, financing needs, or a slower 2H booking cadence, because the equity is now priced for near-flawless execution over the next 2-3 quarters.

Micron’s setup is stronger in the near term because tight supply creates pricing power before capacity decisions catch up. The second-order effect is that every additional GPU deployment tightens memory allocation elsewhere, which can delay normalization in broader semiconductor end markets and keep DRAM/HBM pricing elevated longer than consensus models expect. The key risk is that the cycle invites its own cure: if inventory restocking or foundry expansions accelerate into 2027, MU’s multiple can compress quickly even while earnings remain strong.

TSM is the most interesting contrarian tell: when the contract manufacturer trades richer than some of the growth leaders it serves, the market is effectively paying for guaranteed AI exposure and underweighting concentration risk. That usually persists until capex enthusiasm cools or mix shifts away from leading-edge nodes, at which point TSM can de-rate faster than its fundamentals soften. The broader implication is NVDA may actually be the cleanest relative-value winner into year-end if investors rotate from supply-chain scarcity back into the platform owner with the highest strategic pricing power.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long MU vs short TSM for 1-3 months: MU has clearer near-term earnings torque from HBM scarcity, while TSM’s premium valuation already discounts a lot of AI demand; use a market-neutral spread to isolate relative multiple risk.
• Buy NBIS on pullbacks only, with a 6-12 month horizon: the setup works if revenue re-acceleration persists, but risk should be capped because the stock now trades like a financing-and-execution story rather than a simple growth story.
• Add NVDA on weakness ahead of 2H, especially if the market keeps bidding up infrastructure suppliers: as supply-chain scarcity normalizes, the platform owner can regain relative leadership on operating leverage and ecosystem lock-in.
• Avoid chasing MU into parabolic strength unless inventory data confirms tightness for another quarter: upside remains, but the trade is vulnerable to forward-looking 2027 capacity additions.
• If already long TSM, consider covered calls into strength over the next 4-8 weeks: valuation risk is rising faster than fundamentals, so monetizing premium is preferable to adding here.