Investors have mostly been buying the most popular semiconductor stocks. And while they can still give you significant upside that beats the market, you’re unlikely to get multi-bagger upside potential. A trillion-dollar company needs another 9 trillion in value to 10x. That is a tall order, even in the best of circumstances.
It can thus be a better idea to look into semiconductor stocks that can give you the same gains NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) did two years earlier. It is obviously riskier, but it is worth looking at if you want the reward.
Regardless, the same marquee companies Wall Street is pouring money into today were considered just as risky a few years ago. Here are the three semiconductor stocks that can deliver big gains.
ACM Research (ACMR)
ACM Research (NASDAQ:ACMR) is a semiconductor equipment company that can capitalize significantly on China’s push for chip self-sufficiency. It is an American company, but it mainly sells to China. It specializes in single-wafer wet cleaning tools that remove contaminants to improve chip yields.
Its sales have surged over the years. Revenue was just $108 million with $19 million in net income back in 2019. In 2024, ACM Research posted $782 million in revenue and $104 million in net income. I expect this growth to continue as the Chinese semiconductor market is seeing explosive growth.
There was a recent report that GPUs domestically made in China failed to train DeepSeek’s upcoming R2 model. Companies in China still need more time before they can match the chips made by Nvidia. Once China does manage to make it worthwhile for its AI companies to use domestically-made chips, ACM Research will tremendously benefit from being a part of that chip mass-manufacturing process.
Better yet, ACM Research owns an 81.1% equity interest in ACM Research Shanghai, which trades publicly. ACM Research Shanghai has a market capitalization of CNY 51.88 billion, or $7.23 billion. ACMR itself has a market cap of just $1.6 billion. It had $494 million of cash vs. $287 billion of debt on its balance sheet as of Q2, so the enterprise value is even lower.
ACMR stock is up over 60% year-to-date, and the average price target of $34.7 implies over 36% upside over the next year.
Lasertec (LSRCY)
Lasertec is a Japanese fab-lite semiconductor company that sells inspection and measurement systems. Big semiconductor companies like TSMC (NYSE:TSM), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), and Samsung are its clients, and it has a near-monopoly in the niche of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography mask inspection systems. Lasertec became the first company to commercially offer an EUV mask blank inspection system, which has since become the de facto standard for detecting defects in photomasks used in EUV lithography.
It is sitting at a 62% discount from its high back in late 2021 and has bottomed out from its trough. The financials are stellar, as it has a 3-year revenue growth of 40.6% annually, along with a 3-year EPS growth of 50.8% annually. Both figures are better than those of over 90% of semiconductor companies. The company has $596 million in cash and no debt. Despite all that growth, you’re paying just over 18 times earnings for the stock.
More companies will require semiconductor inspection in the future, and the business looks set to do well with even more pricing power.
Revenue increased 46.78% year-over-year, with net profit margin up 24.02% year-over-year to 38.67% in Q2 2025.
I expect multibagger upside and a full recovery.
POET Technologies (POET)
POET Technologies specializes in photonic integration. It uses its POET Optical Interposer platform to combine electronic and photonic devices into single multi-chip modules. In turn, this can be used for high-speed, low-latency optical engines and modules for AI data centers, telecommunications, edge computing, and LiDAR.
It is still pre-revenue, but the potential is significant. The tech it has can simplify high-speed data transmission for AI clusters without involving labor-intensive assembly, and is very scalable.
Analysts expect $3.55 million in revenue this year and $41.22 million next year. Estimates far out to 2028 see up to $561 million in revenue. The true potential could be in the billions if the data center buildout continues and AI companies remain on their current trajectory.
POET stock has been up over 60.5% in the past year, and this has allowed management to make manageable equity offerings to keep raising cash despite being pre-revenue. It currently has $73 million in cash, which should be enough for two to three years of expenses.
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