Jim Cramer is putting semiconductors back on the marquee. The CNBC host teed up an Investing Club call focused on semis for Thursday, Aug. 13, signaling that the AI silicon complex remains the sector he wants members thinking about heading into the back half of 2026. The teaser itself is thin on specifics, but the timing is deliberate: chip earnings this quarter have redrawn the leaderboard, and the group is fracturing between AI infrastructure winners and everyone else.
Here is what the earnings reports are telling investors across the five names most closely tied to Cramer’s semi thesis.
NVIDIA: Still the Center of Gravity
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) delivered $81.61 billion in Q1 FY2027 revenue, up 85.2% year over year, with Data Center alone at $75.25 billion and networking up 199%. Management guided Q2 to $91 billion at a 75% gross margin. Shares are up 19.57% year to date, and Polymarket assigns a 66.5% probability that NVDA hits $232 in August. Cramer’s recurring line on the name: “Own it, don’t trade it.”
AMD: The Data Center Breakout
AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) posted $11.54 billion in Q2 revenue, with Data Center revenue of $6.72 billion (+107% YoY) now representing 58% of the company. CEO Lisa Su called out that “EPYC demand accelerates, Instinct deployments scale and Helios begins to ramp.” The Anthropic deal for up to 2 gigawatts of MI450 Series GPUs materially expands the merchant-GPU TAM. Even after a 7.42% pullback over the last month on margin optics, shares are up 121.48% year to date.
Broadcom: The Custom Silicon Juggernaut
Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) is the pure play on hyperscaler ASICs. Q2 AI semiconductor revenue hit $10.80 billion (+143% YoY), and Hock Tan guided Q3 AI semis to $16 billion, up over 200% year over year. Free cash flow ran at 46% of revenue. Polymarket puts the probability of Q3 AI revenue clearing $15 billion at 91%, with the $16 billion threshold at 73%. This is the ASIC narrative Cramer has been circling for months.
Qualcomm: The Diversification Trade
Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) is the awkward name in the group. Q3 FY2026 revenue of $9.95 billion came in at the high end of guidance, but handsets fell 20% YoY. The offset: automotive at $1.59 billion, up 61%, marking 23 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. CEO Cristiano Amon is targeting $40 billion in non-handset revenue by FY2029, with non-handset growth accelerating from 24% in FY2026 to greater than 60% in FY2027. Shares are down 4.14% year to date, the laggard of the group.
Marvell: The AI Optics Sleeper
Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL) is the second custom-silicon and optical interconnect leg of the ASIC trade. Q1 FY2027 revenue hit a record $2.418 billion (+28% YoY), with Data Center at 76% of the mix. CEO Matt Murphy flagged “exceptional AI-related bookings” and raised the FY2027 and FY2028 outlook. The Celestial AI and XConn acquisitions plus the NVLink Fusion partnership with NVIDIA anchor the photonics story. Shares are up nearly 155% year to date.
What the Setup Signals
The five names split cleanly into three trades: merchant GPU compute (NVDA, AMD), custom ASIC and networking (AVGO, MRVL) and the diversification rebuild (QCOM). Cramer’s Thursday call is unlikely to unveil a new name so much as reinforce which lane he thinks investors should be overweight as hyperscaler CapEx compounds. On the AI infrastructure side, “real countries are buying these chips in droves for their sovereign AI programs” is the demand story that keeps expanding beyond the handful of U.S. hyperscalers. That backdrop is what keeps this sector at the center of investor attention.
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