By Jeremy Phillips
Publication Date: 2026-05-27 21:13:00
Goldman Sachs just named NVIDIA and Micron Technology the biggest AI winners of the next earnings cycle, and the stock is already moving. Micron is up 214% year-to-date. If you are still trying to decide whether the AI compute and memory supply chain has more room, the crowd that owns it has stopped waiting for permission.
1. ASML Holding: The Monopoly You Forgot You Needed
Every advanced AI chip on earth starts on an ASML (NASDAQ:ASML | ASML Price Prediction) lithography machine. NVIDIA designs the GPU, TSMC builds it, Micron stacks the memory around it, but none of it exists without the EUV scanners that only one company on the planet sells. That is the surprise sitting at the top of this list: the AI trade has a true single point of dependency, and Goldman’s bullish chip forecast feeds straight into ASML’s order book before anyone else’s.
The Q1 2026 earnings report said the quiet part out loud. ASML delivered EPS of $8.43 on revenue of $10.34B with gross margin at 53%, and management raised the full year outlook to $42.47B to $47.19B in revenue. CEO Christophe Fouquet said “Demand for chips is outpacing supply. In response, our customers are accelerating their capacity expansion plans for 2026 and beyond.” Backstop the thesis with a €12B share buyback running through December 31, 2028 and you have a monopoly returning capital while demand re-rates.
The stock is already up 53% year-to-date and trades at a forward P/E of 45, so the easy money is gone. The…
