Marvell Technology, FormFactor, and Applied Materials Shares Are Soaring, What You Need To Know

August 18, 2026 - 01:20

Shares of Marvell Technology, FormFactor, and Applied Materials all posted strong gains in afternoon trading on Wednesday, driven by a fresh wave of optimism around artificial intelligence infrastructure spending. The move came after a Bloomberg report indicated that Anthropic, the AI startup backed by Amazon and Google, told potential investors that its second-quarter revenue run rate has been growing faster than expected. That news reignited confidence that demand for advanced chips and testing equipment remains robust, even as some investors had worried about a slowdown in AI capital expenditures.

Marvell, which makes custom silicon and networking chips for data centers, rose by more than 6 percent on the day. FormFactor, a supplier of probe cards and test systems used in semiconductor manufacturing, climbed over 8 percent. Applied Materials, one of the largest makers of chip production equipment, added roughly 4 percent. The gains were notable because they came despite a broader market that was mostly flat, suggesting the buying was specific to names tied to AI compute and advanced packaging.

The report from Bloomberg suggested that Anthropic's revenue trajectory is tracking well above internal forecasts, which implies that cloud providers and enterprises are still aggressively building out AI capacity. That spending flows directly to companies like Marvell, whose custom accelerators are used in large-scale clusters, and to Applied Materials, which sells tools for making the most advanced logic and memory chips. FormFactor benefits from the need to test every chip that goes into these systems, especially as yields become more complex with smaller geometries.

Some analysts cautioned that the rally could be overdone in the short term, since the actual revenue figures from Anthropic have not been publicly confirmed. Still, the market's reaction shows how sensitive investors are to any signal that AI demand is not fading. For now, the trade is clear: any positive data point from a major AI player lifts the entire semiconductor supply chain, from design software to packaging to final test.