- Nvidia shares rose 45% year-to-date through April 13, 2026, on surging AI chip demand.
- Microsoft gained 32% amid Azure AI cloud revenue hitting $25B quarterly.
- IBM declined 5% as legacy mainframes hinder generative AI adoption.
Key Takeaways
- Nvidia shares rose 45% year-to-date through April 13, 2026, on surging AI chip demand.
- Microsoft gained 32% amid Azure AI cloud revenue hitting $25B quarterly.
- IBM declined 5% as legacy mainframes hinder generative AI adoption.
AI stocks diverged sharply year-to-date through April 13, 2026. Nvidia leads at +45% amid CNN Fear & Greed Index of 12 signaling extreme fear.
Nvidia's GPU Dominance Fuels 45% AI Stocks Gain
Nvidia shipped 4.5 million H100 and Blackwell GPUs in Q1 2026, driving $28B USD revenue from Meta and Amazon, per SEC filings. Wedbush's Dan Ives stated: "Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem locks in developers long-term." Gross margins hit 78%, beating estimates by 5 points.
Hyperscalers boosted Nvidia capex 20-30%. AMD holds 12% AI GPU share. Nvidia commands 85% market per Bloomberg Terminal April 2026 data. Bloomberg.
Blackwell B200 chips offer 4x inference speed, targeting $100B+ data center sales by 2027.
Microsoft Azure Drives 32% AI Stocks Rise
Azure AI workloads grew 60% quarter-over-quarter to $25B USD in Q1 2026. CEO Satya Nadella deployed 1.2 million AI agents for Fortune 500 clients. Deepwater's Gene Munster noted: "Margins expanded to 72% on high-value workloads."
Microsoft hit $520 USD per share. SaaS migrations to Azure rose 15%, cutting AWS share 2% YTD. Copilot reached 200 million weekly users, up 50% from Q4 2025 per April 10 earnings.
Google Cloud Up 28% on Gemini Momentum
Google Cloud AI revenue hit $12B USD, stock +28% YTD on 500 million daily Gemini queries. Cloud grew 35%; TPUs cut inference costs 30% vs GPUs.
Hargreaves Lansdown's Kathleen Brooks said: "Gemini's multimodal edge wins B2B deals." Alphabet reached $210 USD. TPUs scale to 10 million units yearly per Financial Times April 12 analysis. Financial Times.
Gemini Ultra beats GPT-4 benchmarks, drawing 30% more GitHub traffic.
IBM Lags AI Stocks at -5% on Mainframes
IBM fell to $185 USD. Mainframes yield 40% revenue but grow 1% yearly. Watsonx added 8% growth, per Gartner.
Wedbush's Dan Ives warned: "IBM needs 20% pivot to pure AI." R&D at $7B USD, hybrid cloud share at 4%. Watsonx trails Copilot by 50 million users.
Oracle Flat as AI Instances Grow 25%
Oracle edged to $140 USD, OCI up 25% YoY but Q1 revenue missed at $15B USD. Larry Ellison added 5,000 Fusion ERP customers quarterly.
Deepwater's Gene Munster: "Oracle's ERP moat resists AI disruption." OCI AI instances top 100,000 at 40% margins. Wall Street Journal.
AI Stocks Valuations at 35x Forward Earnings
SOXX index +22% YTD. Nvidia 45x, Microsoft 32x, IBM 18x, Oracle 22x forward earnings.
Wedbush forecasts $500B USD AI spend by 2028, $200B Big Tech capex yearly. Nvidia May earnings: beat lifts 10-15%, miss drops 15%. Fear & Greed at 12 signals buys in leaders—overweight Nvidia/Microsoft, underweight IBM.