Is Sandisk the Next Nvidia? | The Motley Fool

One year ago, Sandisk (SNDK 0.59%) was spun off from Western Digital (which had bought it in 2016) and once again became an independent, publicly traded company. Since making its second debut on the Nasdaq, Sandisk stock has skyrocketed by more than 1,500%.

Let’s dive into the tailwinds that have fueled Sandisk’s parabolic price action and consider whether it’s still a good time for smart investors to buy the stock.

Why is Sandisk outperforming Nvidia in 2026?

Before examining Sandisk’s ascent, investors may find it helpful to understand how Nvidia (NVDA 2.21%) became the leader of the AI processor realm. While Nvidia is a diversified business, its bread and butter is designing graphics processing units (GPUs) — the hardware that provides the key computing power required to develop and deploy AI models.

Over the last few years, hyperscalers like Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI have collectively spent hundreds of billions of dollars procuring GPUs from Nvidia. As companies accelerate the pace at which they invest in AI, the data workloads involved are scaling at an unprecedented rate.

This is leading to capacity constraints — and as demand for additional cloud infrastructure is on the rise, demand for GPUs and other AI processors is outpacing supply. But as the data center buildout continues, another big bottleneck is forming in the high-bandwidth memory (HBM)…