KEY POINTS
- AMD shares have climbed roughly 114% year-to-date through May 14 versus Nvidia's 18% gain, the widest performance gap between the two AI chip rivals since 2017.
- The Apple-Intel preliminary foundry agreement reported last week sent INTC up 14% in a session and reframed Intel as a credible second source for leading-edge chip manufacturing.
- Traders will watch Nvidia's May 27 earnings and the Computex keynote slate next week for any commentary that re-anchors the AI capex narrative around the incumbent.
AMD shares are up roughly 114% year-to-date through Thursday's session versus Nvidia's 18% gain, according to CNBC, the widest performance gap between the two AI chip rivals since 2017 and the cleanest evidence yet that Wall Street's AI capital is rotating away from the incumbent and into the second tier.
Nvidia closed Wednesday at $227.80 after intraday trading between $221.57 and $227.84, while AMD finished near $438.10 after a daily range of $436 to $439.81. The dollar levels matter less than the relative momentum: AMD has compounded above 10% per month for five consecutive months, and the stock now trades at roughly 42 times forward earnings versus Nvidia's 32, a premium that historically signaled exhaustion but in this cycle reflects accelerating MI400 series order books and the Lisa Su-led pivot into rack-scale Helios systems.
The Foundry Wildcard
The most consequential piece of the rotation arrived May 8 when the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary chip-manufacturing agreement, sending INTC up nearly 14% on the session, per CNBC's reporting. The deal, more than a year in negotiation and personally pushed by President Trump in a White House meeting with Tim Cook, would route a portion of Apple's M-class and A-series silicon production through Intel Foundry beginning as early as 2027.
For Apple, the agreement is a supply-chain hedge — CEO Tim Cook conceded on the latest earnings call that iPhone 17 sales were constrained because Apple could not get enough A19 and A19 Pro chips from TSMC. For Intel, it is existential validation. Landing Apple as a foundry customer puts CEO Lip-Bu Tan's restructuring strategy on credible footing and gives the Foundry segment a marquee logo to point at when negotiating with Qualcomm, Broadcom, and AMD on future node commitments. Intel's 18A node, which begins risk production this quarter, becomes the critical execution milestone.
The Rotation Is Not Clean
The chip rotation is not a smooth march. Qualcomm dropped more than 11% on Monday in its worst session since 2020 after softer handset guidance, Skyworks fell 5%, and Marvell shed 4%, Yahoo Finance reported. The dispersion underscores that traders are not simply buying every chip ticker — they are funding AI infrastructure exposure and dumping handset and consumer-IoT names. Inside the AI cohort itself, Tower Semiconductor surged after guiding Q2 revenue above consensus and disclosing $1.3 billion in 2027 AI chip deals, while Arm raised its data-center forecast on agentic AI CPU demand.
The setup creates a barbell. Traders long AMD and Intel into the rotation are sitting on multi-bagger gains and need a reason to trim. Traders underweight Nvidia ahead of its May 27 report are betting that the company's Hopper-to-Blackwell transition, plus the Spectrum-X networking ramp, will reassert the historical 80%-plus AI training share. Nvidia still controls roughly 81% of AI accelerator silicon by Wall Street estimates, and the magnitude of any forward revenue guide on the call will determine whether the rotation continues or reverses violently.
What to Watch Into Computex
Computex Taipei opens May 19, and CEO Jensen Huang's keynote is expected to detail Blackwell Ultra availability, Rubin platform timelines, and partnership extensions across the Taiwan supply chain. The conference historically drives single-day moves of 3% to 5% across the AI chip complex, and this year carries additional weight because AMD's Su will keynote the same week alongside Intel's Tan. The three keynotes back-to-back will give traders the cleanest read in months on which AI roadmap is gaining share with cloud and enterprise customers.
The Magnificent 7 collectively plan to spend close to $700 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, with Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta leading the capex committee. Whichever silicon vendor walks away from Computex with the biggest share of that wallet sets the trade for the back half of the year. The May 27 Nvidia print is the verdict.
