[Digital Today reporter Yoonseo Lee] Storage company SanDisk has been tallied as the asset with the highest return so far in 2026.

BeInCrypto, a blockchain outlet, reported on May 21 that SanDisk shares rose about 509 percent from Jan. 1 to May 20, the biggest gain among major stocks, cryptocurrencies, commodities and indexes.

The next best performer was crypto token DeXe, which rose 363 percent. Intel gained 209 percent and Seagate rose 183 percent. That confirmed that this year’s top market returns were concentrated in AI-related names.

AI data centre demand has been cited as the driver of SanDisk’s surge. SanDisk supplies memory chips for data centres used to train large AI models. In an earnings release on April 30, the company said revenue rose 251 percent from a year earlier to $5.95 billion. In the same announcement, it also disclosed a cloud customer order backlog of $42 billion.

The shares then climbed to a record high of $1,562 on May 8 and are now trading around $1,383. They are down more than 11 percent from the May peak, but the stock’s year-to-date gain is more than 30 times that of the Nasdaq 100.

By contrast, bitcoin, which had drawn big expectations from retail investors, has struggled. Bitcoin started 2026 at $87,600 but has fallen to around $76,800. The loss since the start of the year is 22.9 percent. A $1,000 investment in bitcoin would now be worth about $771.

Gold was also not as strong as expected. After hitting a record $5,589 an ounce on Jan. 28, it has retreated to around $4,500. That left its return since the start of the year at 6.5 percent. Brent crude, by contrast, rose 86 percent to around $113 a barrel from $60.59. That move was presented as mainly driven by rising tensions around the Strait of Hormuz in April.

Industrial metals showed a differentiated trend. On the London Metal Exchange, copper rose 42 percent, supported by demand for AI data centres and electric vehicles. Silver’s gain was limited to 3.4 percent as its January surge faded.

Major stock indexes were relatively subdued. The Nasdaq 100 rose 16 percent, the S&P 500 gained 9.1 percent and the Dow Jones rose 3.9 percent. Nvidia, considered a 대표 AI stock, underperformed the sector average, and Microsoft is down from the start of the year.

As a result, market money appears to have shifted from large, leading AI names to less-watched supply chain stocks such as SanDisk, Intel and Seagate. This year’s return race is unfolding in a structure led by some names directly tied to AI infrastructure rather than benchmark assets such as bitcoin or gold.

In this year’s asset markets, stocks directly exposed to AI infrastructure demand have stood out more than traditional inflation hedges or major cryptocurrencies. As bitcoin and gold fell short of expectations, memory, storage and semiconductor supply chain names posted strong gains on expectations of expanded data centre investment. The remaining key issues are how much AI infrastructure demand will translate into actual results and how far the market can bear valuation burdens for stocks that have surged.