SanDisk Up 558% This Year as Chip Stocks Outpace the 1999 Dot-Com Bubble

The semiconductor sector has entered territory the Wall Street Journal is now calling “the great chip stock melt-up of 2026.” By every objective measure of raw price performance, this rally has surpassed the 1999 dot-com bubble. The Morning Brew Daily podcast episode on Monday, May 11, laid out the bull and bear case for the chip industry in plain terms, and the numbers are worth a look for any investor with chip exposure.

The Headline Parabolic Moves

SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK | SNDK Price Prediction) is up 558% this year, supplying NAND flash memory to AI data centers. Unlike many speculative bubbles, the business fundamentals behind the move have also accelerated dramatically. Q3 FY26 revenue reached $5.95 billion, up 251% year over year, while the company’s Datacenter segment alone grew 645% YoY to $1.467 billion. CEO David Goeckeler described the moment as “a fundamental inflection point” during the company’s Q3 release.

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is up 239%, with the foundry bet paying off. The semiconductor slice of the S&P 500 has added roughly $3.8 trillion in market cap over the past six weeks.

The 1999 Comparison Is Becoming Difficult to Ignore

The top 10 performers in the Nasdaq 100 over the past year are up an average of 784%. At the March 2000 dot-com peak, the comparable top 10 were up an average of 622%. By that yardstick, the current run is objectively more extreme than the bubble that preceded the 42.22% Nasdaq 100 collapse between January and March 2000.

The Bull Case Says This Time Is Fundamentally Different

Unlike many dot-com companies, the leaders of today’s AI infrastructure rally are producing massive and rapidly growing cash flows. Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) went from $15.5 billion in 2023 revenue to an expected $107 billion in 2026. Q1 FY26 alone delivered $13.643 billion in revenue, up 56.6% YoY, with Cloud Memory at a 66% gross margin. AI agents working continuously require enormous amounts of memory, which is why both memory and compute are rallying together.

The story is global. South Korea’s stock market is up more than 71% this year and has leapfrogged Canada to become the world’s 7th largest, with Samsung recently crossing $1 trillion in market cap. Investors seeking structured exposure can consider the Roundhill Memory ETF (CBOE: DRAM), which holds Samsung Electronics (24.99%), SK hynix (24.22%), and Micron (23.83%) as its largest positions.

The Froth Signal

The Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (NYSEARCA:SOXL) is now one of the most traded tickers on Interactive Brokers, with retail piling in. SOXL is up 320.99% year-to-date.

That comes with meaningful risk. SOXL targets 3x daily returns and resets every trading session, meaning long-term performance can diverge sharply from the underlying semiconductor stocks due to volatility decay.

Micron and SanDisk are producing real revenue growth. The debate is whether stock prices have already outrun even those extraordinary fundamentals. In an environment like this, position sizing and risk management may matter more than simply deciding whether AI demand will continue to grow.