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Matt Phillips1/6/26

Data storage stocks surge as Nvidia CEO calls the market “completely unserved”

Sandisk soared in early trading, leading the pack of data storage stocks that topped the market last year — including Western Digital, Micron, and Seagate Technology Holdings — sharply higher Tuesday.

Despite little news on Sandisk itself, its shares were trading at a furious rate. Shortly before 10 a.m. ET, roughly 4.1 million had changed hands, more than 3x as much as normal for that stage of the session.

Besides benefiting from a broad upswing in AI-related trades on Tuesday, memory chip and data storage makers have soared, alongside prices for their products, in an rally that started late last year.

Closely watched comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the Consumer Electronics Show underscored the strong outlook for demand from the AI industry for data storage.

“This market will likely be the largest storage market in the world, basically holding the working memory of the world’s AIs,” he told analysts at the trade show Monday, who called storage “a completely unserved market today.”

That demand seems set to continue to push prices up in early 2026, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

In a note published Tuesday, tech hardware analysts at the bank wrote that prices for DRAM memory, which Micron makes, are expected to increase 40% to 70% quarter over quarter in Q1.

Similarly prices for NAND flash memory — a crucial form of memory for long-term storage and the heart of Sandisk’s products — are expected to increase 30% to 35% in Q1 2026, Morgan Stanley analysts said, citing industry estimates.

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Infleqtion soars after announcing it’s providing upgraded quantum hardware to the International Space Station

Quantum technology firm Infleqtion is booming in early trading after announcing that it would be providing upgraded quantum hardware to the International Space Station as part of a cargo mission slated to launch as early as Friday.

The equipment “is designed to support the stable and simultaneous production of dual-species quantum degenerate gases using rubidium and potassium atoms, one of the long-standing scientific objectives of the mission,” per the press release, and will expand the Cold Atom Laboratory’s ability “to investigate ultracold matter and demonstrate advanced quantum sensing in space, under real operating conditions.”

After the close on Wednesday, the company said it was targeting sales of $40 million this year, which if achieved would have revenue growth accelerating to 23% from 12% in 2025.

“Space remains a particularly important market for us in a major area of growth,” CEO Matt Kinsella said during a conference call on Wednesday, highlighting that the company has partnered with NASA for over a decade.

Read more: Infleqtion CEO Matt Kinsella on how the newly public quantum computing company is “following in the footsteps of Nvidia”

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Matt Phillips1h

Intel announces custom chip collaboration with Google Cloud for AI

Intel shares rose early Thursday after it announced a new multiyear collaboration with Alphabet’s Google Cloud division on AI infrastructure.

The deal includes co-development of custom chips for Google’s needs, a program that Intel says is “reinforcing the critical role of CPUs and custom infrastructure processing units (IPUs) in scaling modern, heterogeneous AI systems.”

Shares popped into positive territory on the premarket announcement.

Intel, Google Deepen Collaboration to Advance AI Infrastructure

Intel, Google Deepen Collaboration to Advance AI Infrastructure

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Amazon cloud unit’s AI revenue run rate exceeds $15 billion, CEO says

Amazon is up nearly 2% in premarket trading after the company disclosed that its cloud unit’s AI revenue run rate topped $15 billion in the first quarter of 2026, the first hard number the company’s provided for its top-line AI performance.

Sales generated from the emergent technology are “ascending rapidly” and already 260x what Amazon Web Services revenues were at a similar time in its maturity, CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his letter to shareholders.

CEO Andy Jassy’s 2025 Letter to Shareholders

CEO Andy Jassy’s 2025 Letter to Shareholders

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CoreWeave expands its AI compute sales deal with Meta to $21 billion

CoreWeave announced that it’s significantly boosting its sales of AI computing capacity to Meta.

The neocloud will now provide an additional $21 billion in AI compute to the social media giant through December 2032.

CoreWeave had previously booked a $14.2 billion deal back in September that had included an option to expand the commitment, which has been exercised with today’s announcement along with new compute purchased.

Shares jumped in premarket trading, but gave all that advance and then some to trade down 3.5% as of 10:10 a.m. ET.

CoreWeave recently closed a financing deal that management billed as the first of its kind, as it was backed by its chips and Meta’s AI compute purchase. This ability to effectively borrow Meta’s superior creditworthiness helped CoreWeave reduce its cost of debt.

Separately, CoreWeave also announced that it intends to issue $3 billion in senior convertible notes due in 2032 and $1.25 billion in senior notes due in 2031 in separate private offerings.

“As spending on AI infrastructure continues to accelerate so does the need for additional debt funding, with both Meta and CoreWeave likely to continue to tap debt markets as their cloud capacity agreement expands,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence credit analysts Robert Schiffman and Alex Reid.

Update (10:34 a.m. ET): A previous version of this post erroneously stated that the $21 billion deal was inclusive of the prior $14.2 billion in purchase commitments.

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J. Edward Moreno4h

STAAR Surgical soars after company reported preliminary sales that crushed expectations

STAAR Surgical rose more than 20% in premarket trading after it gave preliminary Q1 sales numbers that crushed Wall Street expectations, which it attributed to booming sales in China and the Americas.

The company, which sells eye implants, said in a press release published Wednesday that it expects to report revenue north of $90 million in the current quarter, compared to the $73 million analysts polled by FactSet are currently penciling in.

The company said sales in China “accounted for the majority of the increase in net sales, along with continued double-digit growth in the Americas.” It also noted that sales in the Middle East “were negatively affected by significant geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges, resulting in a decline in sales in parts of those regions.”

The stock is up nearly 21% as of 6:25 a.m. ET, having fallen more than 11% from the start of the year to yesterday’s close.

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