The bears said the AI infrastructure trade was over. Samsung just proved them wrong in spectacular fashion. The South Korean chipmaker’s preliminary second-quarter operating profit came in at roughly 89.4 trillion won — nearly $60 billion — up 19 times year over year. The driver? Almost pure AI memory demand. That number doesn’t support the narrative that the AI infrastructure cycle has peaked. It obliterates it.
This month’s selloff in AI infrastructure stocks has been significant. Micron Technology (MU) dropped about 20% from its June record high. SpaceX Technologies (SPCX), TeraWulf (WULF), Amazon (AMZN), and Palantir (PLTR) each shed double digits from their peaks. The bear thesis: AI spending is unsustainable, enterprise budgets are tapping out, and the bubble is inflating dangerously. IBM’s earnings pre-announcement seemed to confirm the fears — the stock crashed more than 20%, its worst single session since the 1987 crash, after CEO Arvind Krishna revealed that enterprise clients pulled capex out of software and consulting in the final weeks of June to panic-buy supply-constrained servers, storage, and memory ahead of anticipated price hikes. But here’s what the market missed: IBM’s pain is Samsung’s gain. The same shortage minting near-record profits in memory and storage is cannibalizing enterprise software and consulting budgets everywhere else. The money didn’t leave AI. It concentrated inside it.
Five stocks now trade at double-digit discounts from their highs while carrying Wall Street’s full conviction. SpaceX (SPCX) has buy ratings from Goldman Sachs ($205 price target), Morgan Stanley ($300), and Oppenheimer, with revenue estimates jumping from $18.6 billion this year to $74.2 billion in 2027 and $135 billion in 2028. TeraWulf (WULF) just signed a 20-year, $19 billion deal with Anthropic for a 401-megawatt AI campus in Kentucky — revenue growth is projected at 89% this year and 210% in 2027. Amazon (AMZN) tapped the debt markets for $25 billion in fresh AI infrastructure funding. Palantir (PLTR) continues to show accelerating revenue growth as government and commercial AI contracts scale. Micron (MU) remains sold out of high-bandwidth memory through 2026. The decisive catalyst arrives in roughly three weeks: hyperscaler earnings from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. If those companies reaffirm or raise their 2026 capital expenditure plans, the current pullback looks like the entry point — not the top. Samsung’s $60 billion quarter is the signal investors should be reading right now.
