In global stock markets, a rapid generational shift appears to be under way among AI beneficiaries. Major tech firms that have positioned AI as a growth engine have been seen as AI beneficiaries, but the picture has changed over the past few months.

In the U.S. stock market, memory, hard-disk and fibre-optic cable companies are leading gains rather than companies such as Nvidia, Microsoft and Amazon.

Nvidia, the world’s strongest AI chip company, posted a 73 percent jump in revenue and a 95 percent rise in net profit last quarter. Both beat analyst estimates. Nvidia’s net profit margin reached 55.6 percent, a level that overwhelms rival chipmakers. S&P Global Market Intelligence data show that over the past year AMD’s net profit margin was 12.5 percent and Broadcom’s was 36.2 percent.

That report card lifted the stock when results were announced on Feb. 25 local time. But the rally did not last beyond a day. Nvidia shares fell 4 percent again on Feb. 26.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Nvidia has not been the growth stock leading the U.S. market recently. It rose only 6 percent over the past six months. That lagged the Dow industrials and other chipmakers.

Some investors think AI tools such as Google, OpenAI and Anthropic could threaten the software industry. They are showing strong interest in companies that supply products that help resolve bottlenecks tied to expanding data centres.

In the case of generator maker Caterpillar, it is up 30 percent this year and is leading gains in the Dow, the WSJ reported. Corning, which boasts a 175-year history, recorded losses in its fibre-optic cable business over the past 20 years, but its shares are now headed toward record highs on enthusiasm for building AI data centres.

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Beyond memory chip companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, SanDisk, known as a supplier of memory cards for digital cameras and USB drives, has now surged as a representative beneficiary of the AI era. SanDisk also launched as an independent listed company after being spun off from Western Digital in February last year. It drew little attention early on, but became the biggest beneficiary of a sharp rise in memory-chip prices that began in September last year. As of late January, SanDisk shares had surged 976 percent in five months.

By contrast, major tech firms once seen as representative AI beneficiaries are relatively weak. Microsoft shares are down 17 percent this year, and Amazon has fallen 10 percent.

AI still has a big impact on stock price volatility. It has also produced scenes where a single blog post sends shares swinging. On Feb. 22, a dystopian outlook on AI posted on a blog by Citrini Research went viral and led to selling.

Enterprise software companies such as Salesforce are also reshaping their businesses around AI, but in terms of share prices they remain held back by the narrative of an "AI-driven threat." The fact that its shares fell even after it released fairly decent results on Feb. 25 is not unrelated to this.

Salesforce, whose mainstay is AI and cloud CRM, rose 12 percent in fiscal 2026 fourth quarter. According to The Information, it was not outstanding growth, but it was better than the 8.6 percent growth through the third quarter, yet it did not have a positive effect on the stock. Besides Salesforce, major enterprise software companies such as Workday also saw their shares fall mostly after earnings announcements.

According to foreign media, the decline in enterprise software stocks reflects investors’ concerns that AI could weaken future growth.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff stressed after the results announcement that annual recurring revenue for the AI agent platform Agentforce rose 169 percent from a year earlier to $800 million, but investors are questioning Salesforce’s long-term growth potential as they worry that AI agents could replace SaaS platforms, The Information reported.