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The past year has been a continuation of an unceasing tech rally, one that may continue well into 2026 and beyond. If you are a strong believer in that, looking into Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU), Western Digital (NASDAQ:WDC), and ACM Research (NASDAQ:ACMR) can help you outperform the broader market significantly. All three are riding the AI megatrend and have strong revenue visibility beyond 2026.
These companies are on the “frontline” when it comes to AI hardware. Data centers are being built out at a record pace, and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) is not the only company that is benefiting from it. The market is starting to move past NVDA stock and is pouring into other satellite AI beneficiaries who are seeing explosive upward momentum one after the other.
Let’s take a look at why the following three can win big next year.
Micron Technology (MU)
If you’ve built a PC anytime soon, you’ll know that random-access memory (RAM) prices have been soaring. Certain RAM chips have seen their prices quintuple or more in a matter of weeks. This is thanks to stubborn demand from data centers outpacing supply. One would logically say: how can I benefit from this instead of losing out like every other consumer?
Micron is a medium to do just that.
This company sells semiconductors like DRAM, RAM, NAND flash, SSDs, and similar items that are seeing record demand from data centers. It is seeing demand so strong that the company’s management has decided to exit the consumer market and is now focusing on enterprise clients.
I believe this will increase margins significantly, as the consumer market has lower margins. Companies are willing to pay far more, especially at a time when it is becoming harder to secure supplies for data centers. Every hyperscaler is rushing to build as much as possible, and Micron is well-positioned to benefit from that.
Analysts expect the RAM market to remain tight through 2026, possibly stretching into 2027 or even 2028. Thus, I see MU stock outperforming in 2026. It has delivered over 226% in year-to-date 2025 gains (as of writing).
Western Digital (WDC)
Western Digital is in a similar market, but it supplies another crucial component that data centers need. It focuses on hard drives and solid-state drives. If you use a computer, you certainly have those components being used, and data centers are putting them into use even more aggressively.
AI training needs petabytes (thousands of terabytes) of data. The amount of data needed is only increasing as the AI battle heats up. It’s not just text AI that is being trained by companies now. Image AI models and video AI models need even more data, as they often train on 4K videos.
The meteoric increase in demand has translated into the stock price exploding by over 288% year-to-date.
You’re still paying just 23 times forward earnings for FY 2026 (ends in June 2026). I expect a lot more upside as FY 2026 EPS growth is expected at 58%. It may prove to be an underestimate if data center demand again proves to be sticky.
ACM Research (ACMR)
ACM Research makes equipment for semiconductor fabrication, particularly wet cleaning systems (SAPS, Tahoe) and electroplating (ECP) tools. This is a U.S.-based company, but the twist is that it owns a much larger Chinese company called ACM Research (Shanghai), Inc.
That Chinese arm is worth $12.2 billion, of which 74.6% is owned by ACM Research. This equals $9.1 billion, well over the $2.64 billion market capitalization on the Nasdaq stock exchange. This discrepancy was called out by Kerrisdale Capital in January of this year, where ACMR stock was called a “10-Bagger”. ACMR stock is up over 132% since then, and I believe it can go much higher.
Financials are still excellent, and the Chinese arm maintains market dominance. The company can also skirt geopolitical tensions (as it has done recently) due to the Chinese arm being separate.
Analysts expect nearly 16% revenue growth for all of 2025 and 18.3% revenue growth next year. You’re paying less than 20 times forward earnings for the stock, though that is irrelevant considering the large discrepancy between the Shanghai arm and the U.S.-traded entity makes it a bargain-basement buy.