Corning and Qualcomm rallied on Tuesday after unveiling separate multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure deals, pulling chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices higher with them. Qualcomm issued Amazon warrants for up to $4 billion in stock as part of a server-chip pact worth up to $60 billion, while Corning struck a fiber-optic deal with Verizon.
Qualcomm's Amazon deal fuels the rally
Qualcomm issued warrants to Amazon on Tuesday, letting the cloud giant acquire up to $4 billion worth of stock in the chipmaker. The warrants are part of a pact under which Amazon Web Services will purchase up to $60 billion worth of Qualcomm's server chips and other technology.
Its CFO Akash Palkhiwala said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference that revenue from manufacturing chips for Amazon will start in the December quarter and will be one of the "core components" of hitting the company's $15 billion data center revenue target for fiscal 2029. At its investor day in June, Qualcomm said it was working with two unnamed data center companies, one of which was Amazon. According to CNBC, Palkhiwala said Tuesday the company is "similarly proceeding with the other data center customer."
Corning and chipmakers ride the fiber-optic wave
Corning jumped 8% on Tuesday, bringing its gain for the year to 90%, after disclosing a multibillion-dollar partnership with Verizon to build fiber-optic cables for AI connectivity. The deal follows a multibillion-dollar agreement Corning struck with Amazon in June, a month after Nvidia promised to invest up to $3.2 billion in the company to build three fiber-optic manufacturing facilities in North Carolina and Texas.
The optimism spread beyond the two companies announcing deals. Intel and AMD gained 9% and 6% respectively, Hewlett Packard Enterprise climbed 8%, and photonics company Coherent added 7%. AMD CFO Jean Hu also spoke at the Goldman event, saying the semiconductor industry's total addressable market will now hit $3 trillion by 2030, after CEO Lisa Su said in July the industry would reach $2 trillion through 2028.
Public opinion looms as a risk factor
The rally comes as issues surrounding AI and data centers sit at their most divisive. A May 2026 Gallup poll found 71% of Americans oppose data centers being built in their communities. That translates into financial risk: Anthropic is poised to list negative public opinion toward AI and data centers as a risk factor in its forthcoming IPO prospectus.
Source: CNBC
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
