3 Under-the-Radar AI Stocks Wall Street Is Missing
While Wall Street piles into the usual semiconductor giants, three mid-cap names buried deeper in the AI stack are quietly booking orders into 2027 and posting triple-digit revenue growth that most investors have not noticed yet.
The mega-cap AI trade has become a crowded consensus. NVIDIA, Broadcom, and AMD dominate the headlines, but the real leverage on hyperscaler capex is buried a layer deeper in the stack: the connectivity fabric, memory interfaces, and inspection tools that make gigawatt-class GPU clusters actually work. Three mid-cap names sit squarely in that picks-and-shovels layer, each with fundamentals that already validate the story. Here is what to watch heading into September 2026.
Credo Technology: Connectivity Compounder With an Optical Inflection Ahead
Credo Technology (NASDAQ:CRDO | CRDO Price Prediction) closed Wednesday at $240.24, up 24.94% over the past month and 66.96% year to date. The market cap sits at roughly $45.15B, still small enough to be overlooked next to the semiconductor giants.
The Q4 fiscal 2026 report on June 1, 2026 was the kind of quarter that reprices a story. Revenue landed at $437.00 million, up 157.0% year over year and beating the $433.30 million consensus. Non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.16 topped the $1.03 estimate, marking four consecutive quarters of EPS beats. Non-GAAP gross margin expanded to 68.3%.
CEO Bill Brennan framed it directly: "Fiscal 2026 was another transformative year for Credo, and yet we believe we are still in the early innings of the opportunity ahead." Management is guiding fiscal 2027 revenue to grow more than 80% year over year, with the optical portfolio alone contributing more than $600 million. Q1 FY2027 guidance calls for $465.0 million to $475.0 million in revenue.
The bull case is straightforward: Active Electrical Cables remain the core engine, and ZeroFlap optics, Active Line Cards, and OmniConnect open three new multi-billion-dollar TAM expansions. The risk: customer concentration remains extreme. In Q4, four customers each represented at least 10% of revenue, with the largest at 34%. A model-based outlook currently rates CRDO a HOLD at a base-case price of $237.03, with a bull case reaching $334.14 over one year.
Astera Labs: Scorpio Ramps Ahead of Schedule
Astera Labs (NASDAQ:ALAB) trades at $304.09, up 82.79% year to date. The 223x trailing P/E is aggressive, but the underlying growth arc is unusual.
Q2 fiscal 2026, reported August 4, 2026, delivered record revenue of $392.40 million, up 104.45% year over year and 27% sequentially. That beat the $360.81 million consensus by 8.76%. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.80 stretched the beat streak to eight consecutive quarters. Non-GAAP operating margin hit 39.1%.
The pivotal detail is Scorpio. CEO Jitendra Mohan told investors: "Scorpio X series is in volume production and we expect our Scorpio family to become our largest product category by revenue in Q3." That milestone is arriving one quarter ahead of prior expectations. Q3 guidance is $540 million to $560 million in revenue with non-GAAP EPS of $1.16 to $1.21. Management is aiming for "multiple thousands of dollars per XPU" in content over time.
The caveat is valuation. The forward P/E-based fair value is $191.47, well below the current print, and beta of 3.84 signals turbulence. The model rates ALAB HOLD with a one-year bull case of $477.5 and a bear case of $247.39.
Camtek: Advanced Packaging Backlog Extending Into 2027
Camtek (NASDAQ:CAMT) is the smallest of the three at roughly $6.76B in market cap and the most quietly compelling. Shares closed at $144.81, up 66.64% over the past year and 36.17% year to date, but still 14% off the 52-week high of $215.99.
The Q2 2026 report on August 10, 2026 produced record revenue of $133.24 million, up 8.05% year over year, and non-GAAP EPS of $0.78. What matters more is the order book. CEO Rafi Amit said: "Since the beginning of the year, we have experienced a significant acceleration in order intake, bringing total orders received year to date to more than $600 million, with deliveries scheduled through the remainder of 2026 and into 2027."
Roughly 80% of those orders tie to advanced packaging, and over 20% come from HBM manufacturers. Q3 guidance calls for $158 million to $160 million, roughly 20% sequential growth, and management expects Advanced Packaging revenue to grow approximately 70% between Q1 and Q4 2026.
The risks are real. GAAP net income fell 30.84% year over year on a $7.70 million one-time tax charge and Visual Layer acquisition costs, and the Israeli base carries Middle East and Strait of Hormuz shipping exposure. The model outlook, however, is the most constructive of the three: a BUY rating with a base-case one-year target of $191.17, implying 32.01% upside, and a bull case of $218.25.
Positioning Into September
Each name plays a distinct role in AI infrastructure: Credo owns connectivity, Astera owns AI fabric switching and signal conditioning, and Camtek inspects the advanced packages holding HBM and chiplets together. All three carry high betas and hyperscaler concentration, so drawdowns are part of the setup. But the fundamentals, and the visibility already booked into fiscal 2027, suggest the market is still underwriting these as second-tier chip stories rather than the enabling layer they have quietly become (we profiled seven more of these non-chipmaker AI infrastructure suppliers, from power to cooling to networking, in a free report you can grab here).
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Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
