The AI data center buildout is minting a second tier of winners that most retail investors still haven’t priced in. While the crowd fights over GPU tickers, the money is quietly flowing into the plumbing: RF, optical, custom silicon, PCIe retimers, wafer-scale compute. Consider that Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM | ARM Price Prediction) alone now sees over $2 billion in customer demand for its AGI CPU across FY27-FY28, with the data center CPU market pegged at more than $100B by 2030. That is one company, one product line. The following five names sit directly on the fuse.
1. MACOM Technology Solutions
Start with the name almost nobody puts on their AI list. MACOM Technology Solutions (NASDAQ:MTSI) builds the RF, microwave, analog and optical semiconductors that increasingly show up in hyperscaler switch cages and pluggable optics. As 800G migrates to 1.6T and copper interconnects hit their reach limits inside AI racks, MACOM’s analog and light-wave content per rack goes up, not down. This is the shovel play behind the shovel play.
Fiscal Q2 2026, reported May 7 was the tell. Revenue hit $288.95 million, up 22.5% year over year, adjusted gross margin expanded to 58.5%, and management guided fiscal Q3 to $331M to $339M in revenue with adjusted EPS of $1.31 to $1.37. The Street is catching up: analysts carry a consensus target of $403 with three strong buys and nine buys against zero sells.
The chart tells the rest. Shares are up 76.32% year to date through July 10, yet the stock trades at a forward multiple of 45x, well below the pure-play AI silicon cohort. The heavyweight comes next, and it has already tripled.
2. Marvell Technology
Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL) is the custom silicon partner every hyperscaler wants on speed dial. Its portfolio spans 800G and 1.6T scale-out optics, 51.2T Ethernet switches, NPO and CPO optical solutions, and custom XPU designs, which puts Marvell directly inside the AI cluster. The February acquisitions of Celestial AI (photonic fabric) and XConn Technologies bolted on the exact optical interconnect IP that determines who wins the next generation of scale-up fabrics.
Q1 FY2027, reported May 27 put numbers behind the thesis. Revenue reached $2.418 billion, up 27.6% year over year, with the data center segment contributing $1.83 billion, or 76% of revenue, up 27% year over year. Management guided Q2 to $2.70 billion. On the call, CEO Matt Murphy told investors, “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”.
The stock is up 163.80% year to date and 221.44% over the past year. Yet with 31 Buy ratings and seven Strong Buy ratings against a consensus target of $252.26, sell-side conviction remains intact. The next name doesn’t build chips at all. It taxes them.
3. Arm Holdings
Every custom AI CPU shipping in volume in 2026 runs on Arm Holdings IP. NVIDIA Vera, Google Axion, Microsoft Cobalt: all Arm-based. Arm collects a license upfront, then a royalty on every unit shipped, forever. That is the toll-booth model, and the toll booth is now sitting on the fastest-growing road in tech.
Q4 FY2026, reported May 6 delivered revenue of $1.49 billion, up 20.1% year over year, with licensing revenue of $819 million, up 29% and data center royalty more than doubling year over year. CEO Rene Haas framed the setup bluntly: “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.” Meta is the lead partner.
Shares are up 181.87% year to date. Valuation is stretched at 137x forward earnings, but the analyst pool holds seven Strong Buy ratings and 20 Buy ratings. Retail is here too: Reddit sentiment on r/wallstreetbets rebounded to a bullish 74 by June 27 after a brief regret-post-driven dip. The next stock is the one connecting all of these chips inside the rack.
4. Astera Labs
Astera Labs (NASDAQ:ALAB) makes the retimers, smart cable modules, and fabric switches that keep PCIe 6 and CXL links alive inside AI servers. When rack density climbs and every XPU wants to talk to every other XPU at line rate, Astera’s silicon is what makes it possible. In May, the company launched the Scorpio X-Series 320-lane Smart Fabric Switch targeting a $20B merchant scale-up market by 2030. That is not a niche.
Q1 2026 was a statement quarter. Revenue reached $308.36 million, up 93.4% year over year and 14% sequentially, non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.61 versus $0.54 expected, and operating income jumped to $61.8M, up 447.9% year over year. Management guided Q2 to $355 million to $365 million. Astera has beaten consensus in every one of its ten reported quarters, with surprise percentages that show sell-side models can’t keep up.
Shares are up 129.99% year to date and 325.65% over the past year, with a 24.82% pop in the last month alone. The last name on this list builds the entire AI system itself.
5. Cerebras Systems
And here it is: the payoff. Cerebras Systems (NASDAQ:CBRS) went public in Q2 2026, raising $6.4 billion, backed into the AWS ecosystem with a partnership pairing Trainium 3 with the Cerebras CS-3, and then locked in a multi-year OpenAI deal for 750MW of inference compute valued at more than $20B. OpenAI also extended Cerebras a $1B working capital loan in January 2026. Wafer-scale has graduated into the AI inference backbone OpenAI chose. Q1 2026 revenue printed at $193.4M, up 94% year over year, with Cloud and Other Services up 178% to $82.8M. The full-year 2026 guide sits at $855M to $865M, roughly 69% growth at the midpoint. CEO Andrew Feldman put it plainly: “Cerebras’ wafer-scale technology delivers the fastest AI in the world… This is the Cerebras mission.”
The setup is asymmetric. Shares have already pulled back 30.86% since the May 14 IPO peak as retail digested guidance that forecast shrinking margins, with the Reddit sentiment score cratering to 35 on IPO day. Analysts see a target of $291.09, well above the current price. When the largest AI lab in the world writes you a $20 billion contract and a $1 billion loan, gross margin compression in year one is a footnote, not a thesis.
The Bottom Line
The AI datacenter trade has moved past the GPU. It now runs through RF and optical content, custom XPU silicon, licensed CPU cores, PCIe fabrics and wafer-scale inference clusters. Every one of these five names is already accelerating revenue, and four of the five have outperformed the market year to date. The window on the “under the radar” framing is closing quickly as sell-side targets catch up to shipment reality. Keep an eye on the group into the next earnings cycle.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Top Gaining Stocks
Top Losing Stocks