Semiconductor names led broad equity gains in September, with Arm, Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Marvell posting some of the steepest single-month advances as investors loaded up on chip-exposed positions tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure build-outs.
Arm rose 41.9% in September, while Intel climbed 39.2%. AMD gained 35.7%, bolstered by a roughly 22% single-week surge, and Marvell advanced 24.7%, including a 14.2% weekly jump. Natera also participated, rising 21.9%.
The rallies traced back to improving fundamentals and renewed institutional conviction. AMD reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $10.3 billion, up about 38% year over year, with its data-center business surging roughly 57%. Second-quarter data-center sales doubled to $6.7 billion. AMD management also raised its 2030 total addressable market for AI to $3 trillion. The stock has climbed about 141% year to date, with street-high price targets reaching $625, and 36 of 51 analysts rate it a Buy. Meta and Microsoft have deepened supply ties with AMD, the company said, a factor linked to its new consumer AI agent app, Muse.
Intel posted first-quarter revenue of $13.6 billion, a 7% annual increase, with AI-driven revenue growth accelerating to 40% year over year. The chipmaker is processing more than 1 million wafers on ASML High-NA EUV equipment and has secured nearly $8 billion in U.S. government funding under the CHIPS Act. Nvidia also committed a $5 billion investment in Intel. Northland Securities upgraded Intel to Outperform with a $120 price target. The stock has delivered approximately 487% returns over the past year and recently surged almost 40% on cumulative catalysts.
The names were highlighted by InvestingPro's ProPicks AI models, which launched in November 2023 and have compounded 211.14% since inception, outpacing the S&P 500 by 127.83% over the same period. The models evaluate thousands of global equities using more than 15 years of financial data across more than 150 quantitative screens covering over 60,000 stocks.
Beyond the primary four names, Marvell and Natera rounded out the group as other September gainers caught in the same AI-chip momentum trade, though their fundamentals were less extensively detailed in provider notes. The broader move underscored persistent investor appetite for semiconductor names with direct exposure to data-center expansion and next-generation AI hardware cycles.
