New York, May 21, 2026, 16:17 EDT
AI-linked shares led some of Wall Street’s sharpest moves on Thursday, with Arm, Rigetti Computing, IBM, Bloom Energy and Spotify rallying as investors moved beyond Nvidia and bid up companies tied to chips, quantum computing, power supply and AI-driven products.
The move mattered because it showed the artificial-intelligence trade widening again after Nvidia’s latest results. CNBC’s Jim Cramer put the shift bluntly: “Semis are now in charge. Software is taking a back seat,” according to a CNBC post summarizing his comments after Nvidia’s report. LinkedIn
Nvidia gave investors the anchor. The chipmaker reported record quarterly revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% from a year earlier, with data-center revenue of $75.2 billion, and forecast second-quarter revenue of about $91 billion. Its shares still slipped about 1.8% to $219.50 by the close, a sign that even strong numbers must clear a high bar.
Arm was the clearest chip winner. Its U.S.-listed shares jumped 16.1% to $298.16, taking the company’s market value above $300 billion, while TheStreet cited Cramer’s four-word post on X: “ARM what a horse.” TheStreet
The rally had more behind it than television chatter. Arm this month reported record fiscal 2026 revenue of $4.92 billion and said data-center royalties more than doubled year over year. Its AGI CPU, a data-center chip aimed at “agentic AI” — systems that can act with less direct human prompting — puts Arm closer to Intel and AMD in central processors while keeping Nvidia as the benchmark for AI hardware economics. Arm Newsroom
Chief Executive Rene Haas told Reuters in March that Arm’s move into its own AI chip was “a very pivotal moment for the company.” Arm has said the AGI CPU could generate roughly $15 billion in annual revenue in about five years, with Meta as lead partner and OpenAI, Cloudflare, SAP and SK Telecom among customers. Reuters
Quantum stocks caught a separate bid after the U.S. Commerce Department signed letters of intent for $2.013 billion in CHIPS Act incentives across nine companies. Rigetti rose 30.6% to $22.04, while IBM gained 12.5% to $253.02. The planned awards include $1 billion for IBM, $375 million for GlobalFoundries and up to $100 million for Rigetti, with the government set to receive minority, non-controlling stakes.
Power was the other AI bottleneck that traders bought. Bloom Energy shares rose 9.0% to $307.61 after Nebius said Bloom’s fuel cells would provide 328 megawatts of installed capacity for AI infrastructure this year. The systems will provide “behind-the-meter” electricity, meaning power produced on site rather than pulled through the wider grid. nebius.com
“Power remains a key constraint for AI infrastructure build-outs,” Nebius infrastructure chief Andrey Korolenko said. Bloom Chief Commercial Officer Aman Joshi said AI workloads need power infrastructure that matches cloud-platform performance. nebius.com
Spotify was the outlier, but it still fit the AI tape. Shares rose 13.1% to $490.00 after the company laid out 2030 targets and announced a Universal Music deal that will let premium users create AI-generated covers and remixes from participating artists’ catalogs. Co-CEO Alex Norstrom told Reuters the plan was built on “consent, credit and compensation.” Reuters
Spotify also said it expects mid-teens compound annual revenue growth through 2030, gross margins of 35% to 40%, and operating margins above 20%. The company is adding Reserved concert-ticket access, podcast memberships, new Audiobooks+ tiers and Studio by Spotify Labs, a desktop app for private AI-generated audio.
Deere showed the other side of the market. Its shares fell 5.2% to $531.54 even after the farm-equipment maker beat quarterly profit estimates, as it kept full-year net income guidance at $4.5 billion to $5.0 billion and pointed to still-weak demand for large farm machinery.
“Investors are still looking for signs of recovery in the agriculture segments,” Oppenheimer analyst Kristen Owen told Reuters. Deere’s construction business is getting help from data-center buildout, but farmers remain squeezed by weak crop prices and volatile input costs. Reuters
The risk is that the AI trade is starting to price in near-perfect execution. Nvidia excluded China data-center compute revenue from its next-quarter outlook, Arm has warned it still needs more supply for demand beyond the first $1 billion of its new chip, quantum computing remains technically early, and Bloom must deliver large power projects on schedule. Deere’s drop was a reminder that strong earnings do not protect a stock when the cycle still looks soft.
