Analysts at Piper Sandler started coverage of several artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor stocks, forecasting between 19% and 37% upside in Nvidia (NVDA -0.03%), Broadcom (AVGO +0.32%), Arm Holdings (ARM +4.17%), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD +2.49%), and Marvell Technology (MRVL +4.03%). All five stocks received "overweight" ratings.
Piper Sandler analysts David O'Connor and Zackary Altman argued that "AI is starving for more compute capacity," pointing to surging hourly pricing from neocloud companies for graphics processing unit (GPU) usage. They noted that hourly pricing for Nvidia's four-year-old H100 GPUs has climbed 30% from $2.00 in December to $2.60 currently. At the same time, AI chips are largely sold out for next year, and order books are already full for 2028.
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The Piper analysts project that the compute market will climb fivefold to reach $2.2 trillion by 2030. About $2 trillion of that will go to AI chips, with another $200 billion to central processing units (CPUs).
Let's take a closer look at these five AI chip stocks.
Nvidia
Piper sees Nvidia having the most upside among the group, placing a $300 price target on the stock, which is about 37% upside, as of the market close on Sept. 10. The analysts called the company the AI compute leader with about 80% market share, while noting that it continues to outpace the competition despite an increasingly crowded field.
NASDAQ: NVDA
Key Data Points
Nvidia is a stock I think looks like a great buy here. The stock is trading at an attractive valuation, with a forward P/E of 14 times fiscal 2028 (ending January 2028) analyst estimates, and growing rapidly. Its CUDA software platform gives it a wide moat in training, while its "acquisition" of Groq makes it a formidable company in inference, as well.
Broadcom
Piper set a $460 share-price target on Broadcom, representing about 27% upside from here. The firm noted that the company holds about a 75% share of the ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) market for inference and that demand is currently running double supply. It called it the cheapest stock of the group.
Given its valuation (19 times 1-year forward P/E) and extraordinary revenue growth ahead, Broadcom is one of my favorite stocks in the space. The company is both a leader in custom chips and networking, and it sees its AI revenue surging 400% over the next two years to $230 billion in fiscal 2028. It's just too cheap and has too much growth not to own in my view.
Arm Holdings
Arm is another Piper favorite, with the firm placing a $320 target on the stock. That's 26% above its current price. The analysts pointed to the company's important position in CPU intellectual property (IP) and its move to make physical chips for the first time as a catalyst.
NASDAQ: ARM
Key Data Points
Arm is trying to have its cake and eat it too, starting to make its own server CPUs, while also supplying some of the IP for these chips to leading companies like Nvidia, Alphabet, and Amazon. It's well positioned, but the stock looks pricey at a forward P/E of 114 times.
Advanced Micro Devices
Piper put a $600 target on AMD, representing about 19% upside. O'Connor and company pointed to agentic AI as being a big driver for AMD CPU sales, while believing it is well positioned to take market share.
AMD is one of my favorite AI semiconductor stocks because it is riding both the powerful waves of agentic AI and inference. It has been taking share from Intel in the server CPU space, and its GPUs are also well-positioned for inference. It already has some pretty large inference GPU deals in place that will drive tremendous growth in the coming years, while the server CPU market is set to see tremendous growth.
Marvell Technology
The analysts at Piper placed a $270 price target on Marvell, which is about 19% above its closing Sept. 10 price. They called its recent deal with Alphabet transformational, and sees the company benefiting from both the trends in custom chips and optical networking.
NASDAQ: MRVL
Key Data Points
I like Marvell's opportunity, especially in optical interconnect, but at a one-year forward P/E of 34 times and the possibility of no longer being the prime IP company involved with Amazon's AI chips in the future, I'm more neutral on the stock.
