Dell's stock gets an Nvidia bump, but AMD shares among chip names under pressure

By Emily Bary

Here's which stocks are rising after being in Nvidia's halo - and which are making Wall Street worried in the wake of latest chip announcements

It might not be much in the grand scheme of Nvidia Corp.-fueled stock bumps - but given the selloff today in artificial-intelligence stock plays, Dell Technologies Inc.'s move higher stands out.

Shares of Dell (DELL) are up 1.5% in afternoon trading, while shares of other AI-linked companies like Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), Arm Holdings PLC (ARM), Marvell Technology Inc. (MRVL) and Intel Corp. (INTC) are all falling.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang mentioned plenty of partners during his GTC keynote late Monday, but Dell received a special shoutout: Huang pointed to Dell CEO Michael Dell in the crowd and highlighted their friendship and partnership.

Read: Nvidia's stock shrugs off its 'Taylor Swift' moment. Here's why bulls are still cheering.

Dell was the "only big hardware/server company specifically called out by [Nvidia's] CEO as a key partner," Mizuho Securities desk-based analyst Jordan Klein wrote in a note to clients. He wondered if that meant Dell would end up getting better supply than its peers of Nvidia's graphics processing units.

Other stocks seemed to be getting Nvidia bumps, as well. Shares of Cadence Design Systems Inc. (CDNS) were up 3.6% in afternoon trading, after Nvidia mentioned its partnership with the electronic-design-automation company. Nvidia also called out design company Ansys Inc. (ANSS), whose shares were seeing a boost alongside those of Synopsys Inc. (SNPS), which plans to acquire Ansys.

While Nvidia shares had erased their losses and were trading up fractionally Tuesday, shares of many rivals were seeing drops. Case in point: AMD, one of the S&P 500's SPX worst daily performers with a roughly 5% drop as of midday.

AMD's selloff reflects competitive fears that the company's MI300 chip "now looks a lot more pedestrian" after Nvidia talked up the potential of its B100 for inference purposes, according to Mizuho's Klein. Inference is "where MI300 [is] best positioned," he said.

Shares of Marvell and Coherent Corp. (COHR) were each off about 2%. Nvidia's NVLink announcements could be sparking fears that Nvidia technology eventually "displaces some of the content from optical leaders," Klein said.

-Emily Bary

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03-19-24 1352ET

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