The semiconductor sector ripped 8.8% in a single week, with the SMH ETF closing at $619.96 on June 12, 2026, reclaiming levels above both Tuesday’s and Friday’s highs after getting hard hit last Friday. The host of Stock Market Today With IBD said the ETF contains a lot of chips that are well into new high territory that really just didn’t stop at all. If you waited for confirmation, confirmation showed up. These are the five names doing the heavy lifting.
1. Kulicke & Soffa (KLIC): The Small-Cap Nobody’s Talking About
Start with the name most portfolios don’t own. Kulicke & Soffa (NASDAQ:KLIC) makes the back-end packaging equipment that bonds AI chips together, and the host put it right there in new high territory. The company is raising fiscal-year capex from $12M to $22M specifically to expand its Thermo-Compression Bonding systems toward a $400M annual TCB sales target. That is direct advanced-packaging exposure, sold to the same fabs running NVIDIA and AMD’s hottest silicon.
The Q2 FY26 print, reported May 6, 2026, showed revenue of $242.62 million against $161.99 million the prior year, with non-GAAP EPS swinging to $0.79 from a $0.52 loss. CEO Lester Wong said, “Demand is stronger than anticipated due to both technology and capacity needs across general semiconductor, memory, automotive and industrial end markets.” Guidance for the next quarter calls for revenue near $310M and non-GAAP EPS around $1.00.
The stock added 15% last week and is up 149% year to date at $113.13. The 52-week low was $30.93. The next name is the one institutions are forced to own.
2. Lam Research (LRCX): The Heavyweight Doing the Talking
If KLIC is the whisper, Lam Research (NASDAQ:LRCX | LRCX Price Prediction) is the roar. The host called it out by name as looking very strong. Lam sells the deposition and etch tools that every leading-edge fab needs to build HBM stacks and gate-all-around transistors. Every dollar of hyperscaler AI capex eventually walks through a Lam tool.
The March 2026 quarter delivered revenue of $5.84 billion, up 23.8% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $1.47 against a $1.36 consensus, the fourth consecutive EPS beat. Operating margin expanded to 35.0%. CEO Tim Archer said, “Lam delivered record revenue and EPS in the March quarter as AI-driven demand reshapes the semiconductor industry.” June quarter guidance points to $6.60 billion in revenue, a sequential acceleration.
Shares jumped 21% last week to $366.81, with a year-to-date gain of 115%. On a 10-year basis, Lam is up 5,013%. The next name is the only company in the world that builds the machine Lam’s customers can’t live without.
3. ASML: The Monopoly
There is exactly one supplier of EUV lithography systems on the planet, and ASML (NASDAQ:ASML) is it. No EUV, no advanced node. No advanced node, no Blackwell, no MI400, no custom hyperscaler silicon. The toll bridge analogy gets overused, but ASML is the only gas station for fifty miles on the road to sub-2nm.
Q1 2026 revenue came in at $10.34 billion with diluted EPS of $8.43 and gross margin of 53.0%. CEO Christophe Fouquet said, “The semiconductor industry’s growth outlook continues to solidify, driven by ongoing AI-related infrastructure investments. Demand for chips is outpacing supply. In response, our customers are accelerating their capacity expansion plans for 2026 and beyond.” Management raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $42.47B-$47.19B and now sees a 2030 opportunity of $51.91B-$70.78B at 56-60% gross margins.
Backlog tells the story. Q4 2025 backlog stood at $45.06 billion, with quarterly net orders of $15.28 billion, of which $8.60 billion was EUV alone. Shares added 14% last week to $1,863.55, with a YTD gain of 75%. The next name skips the equipment entirely and sells the blueprint.
4. Arm Holdings (ARM): The CPU Standard Is Eating the Data Center
The host said Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) has been looking good, and that is putting it mildly. Arm’s architecture sits inside every smartphone on Earth, and now it is sliding into the data center underneath Google’s Axion, NVIDIA’s Vera, and Microsoft’s Cobalt. When the workload shifted to agentic AI, the CPU stopped being an afterthought.
Q4 FY2026, reported May 6, 2026, showed revenue of $1.49 billion, up 20.1% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.60. License revenue grew 29% and data center royalty more than doubled. CEO Rene Haas said, “As AI becomes more agentic, demand for Arm AGI CPU, Arm’s first data center chip, has exceeded expectations, reinforcing Arm as the compute platform for the AI era.” Customer demand for the AGI CPU already exceeds $2 billion across FY27-FY28, against a data center CPU TAM Arm pegs at over $100 billion by 2030.
The stock ripped 11% last week to $380.81, with a one-month gain of 72% and a YTD gain of 248%. Friday alone was 11%. The valuation is steep at a 449 P/E, but the design wins are real. The last name on this list is where the AI bookings story reads like a hard backlog.
5. Marvell Technology (MRVL): The Payoff
Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL) is the cleanest pure-play on AI data center interconnect that retail investors can buy. Custom XPU silicon for hyperscalers. 1.6T optics. 51.2T Ethernet switches. The plumbing that decides whether a GPU cluster actually scales or just sits there waiting on bandwidth. I’ve followed the custom-silicon thesis for years, and Marvell’s quarter is the one that finally cracked the case open.
Q1 FY2027, reported May 27, 2026, delivered revenue of $2.417 billion, up 27.6% year over year. Data center revenue hit $1.833 billion, or 76% of the total. CEO Matt Murphy said, “We are seeing exceptional AI-related bookings, and as a result, we are significantly raising Marvell’s revenue outlook for both fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2028.” Q2 guidance points to $2.7 billion at the midpoint, an implied 35% growth rate, with management explicitly telling investors to expect growth to accelerate each quarter throughout fiscal 2027.
The kicker is what happened on Reddit during the breakout. Sentiment on June 8 collapsed to 10 on a wallstreetbets post about “100k+ gain shorting Nebius and Marvell last Thursday”, then flipped to 88 by June 10 as the chopper-loading bulls took over. Shares closed the week up 6% at $279.70, with a YTD gain of 230%. Analyst consensus price target sits at $235.70, which the stock has already blown past, and the rating split is 8 Strong Buy, 31 Buy, 5 Hold.
The Setup
The host called the chip sector just spitting distance away from new high territory, and the tape is now there. Five names, five CEOs, one story: AI capex is outrunning supply and the picks-and-shovels providers are guiding sequential acceleration into 2027. KLIC sits at the back end, Lam and ASML own the front end, Arm owns the instruction set, and Marvell owns the interconnect. The breakout already happened. The question is whether you were watching when it did.
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