Position These Tech Plays Before Consensus Wakes Up

August 23, 2026

Marvell grabbing a piece of Google's TPU work did more than dent Broadcom. It redrew the custom silicon map.

Meanwhile, a TSMC insider bought shares on the open market as the AI cycle keeps accelerating. And a fresh CNBC survey shows workers openly split on whether you should even let junior employees touch AI at work.

Three stories. Three sectors. One thread.

The AI trade is fragmenting. And where it fragments is exactly where you find your next entry.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned that one small country poses a major threat to the global economy.

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One analyst believes a little-known $15 stock could sit directly at the center of this shift.

AI Infrastructure

Custom Silicon Just Became a Two-Horse Race

Google's addition of Marvell as a custom silicon partner, backed by the warrant Marvell issued on August 18 for up to 58.97 million shares at $206.58 (about $12.2 billion), isn't just a Broadcom story. It's a structural reset for the entire custom silicon franchise. If you've been watching, Google has been diversifying away from single-vendor ASIC dependence for a while now, and Marvell is now a credible second leg of that strategy.

Broadcom isn't losing allocation here. Google actually expanded that deal back in April. But mark this: the era of one vendor owning the whole hyperscaler ASIC relationship is done. Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are all going to diversify their silicon partners the same way they diversified cloud suppliers a decade ago, so if you own AVGO, treat single-vendor dominance as a thesis that just expired.

Structurally bullish for the challengers. Structurally uncomfortable for incumbents. And structurally great for the packaging, advanced substrate, and testing ecosystem sitting underneath all of it.

Enterprise AI

The AI-at-Work Reality Check

A fresh CNBC/SurveyMonkey survey shows workers openly split on whether junior colleagues should even be allowed to use AI at work. Separately, CNBC ran a piece describing gatekeeping bots and piles of slop inside real offices. This is what the enterprise adoption cycle looks like when you strip out the demo videos.

If you're holding software vendors, this is the trough of disillusionment showing up in real time. The AI story hasn't broken. Implementation reality is just catching up. Governance, permissioning, workflow-specific agents: that's what companies actually want to buy in 2026.

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Semiconductors

The Insider Signal Analysts Are Ignoring

A TSMC vice president, Lipen Yuan, bought 2,350 shares on the open market across August 18 and 19 at $73.58 to $74.50, about $174,000 out of pocket. The Form 4 landed August 20 and it lifted his direct stake by roughly 30%.

Small money against a company this size. The optics are what matter. Some of these executives vested at prices near $5 back in the 1990s. When someone sitting on that kind of paper gain writes a personal check at current levels, you read that signal twice.

Context matters here too. TSMC guided higher on the 2nm ramp for AI chips, and this purchase came after those Q2 numbers landed. Executives don't buy for a quarter. They buy for a multi-year node cycle you can bet they see from inside the fab.

Poll: Which AI hardware company beyond Nvidia has the most credible path to meaningful market share?

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Recent Tech Movers

IT Services
EPAM Systems (NYSE: EPAM)

AI-native mix accelerating into the print

EPAM runs digital engineering and platform work for global enterprises, and the shift toward AI-native project delivery is rewriting how the IT services stack gets valued. Shares closed Friday at $110.34, still less than half the 52-week high of $222.53, after moving sharply on the Q2 report as you weighed an accelerating AI mix against a softer North America backdrop. That tension is exactly what EPAM is now built to work through.

Your near-term catalyst already printed. On August 6, EPAM reported second quarter results with non-GAAP diluted EPS of $3.38, up 22.0% from $2.77 a year earlier, on revenue of $1.415 billion, representing 4.5% year-over-year growth. Pure AI-native revenue topped $160 million in the quarter, marking a sixth straight period of double-digit sequential growth and representing roughly 11% of total sales, and management reiterated it remains on track to hit its $600 million AI-native revenue target for 2026. EPAM also highlighted its Advanced Partner role in the OpenAI Partner Network, which puts the AI-native deal narrative on firmer ground.

The risk is real. The company lowered its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to 3.2% to 4.2% growth, citing a faster-than-expected shift away from task-based services, and underlying concerns center on slowing North America growth. But if you buy the thesis that AI transformation budgets convert into services dollars through 2027, and you already have the reset from the post-print selloff, this is your on-ramp before the growth mix re-rates.

Semiconductor Equipment
Axcelis Technologies (NASDAQ: ACLS)

Ion implant cycle turning

Axcelis (Friday close $127.07, against a 52-week high of $193.78) makes ion implanters. The machines that shoot atoms into silicon to build the transistors running everything from EVs to hyperscaler power delivery. Least glamorous part of the semi capex cycle. Also where you'll see the WFE recovery starting to show up in bookings.

The catalyst you care about is power semiconductor demand. ACLS leads in high-current implanters for SiC and IGBT power devices, exactly the components you need for EV drivetrains and AI data center power infrastructure. If the power semi cycle inflects in H2 2026 as management has been guiding, the earnings leverage on this business is significant.

Your risk is timing. If China demand rolls over or the power semi glut lingers into 2027, Q4 numbers get ugly. But you're paying for a trough here, so any upside surprise moves the stock double digits in a single session.

Audio Tech

Dolby Laboratories (NYSE: DLB)

Atmos in every new car

Dolby is one of the least-discussed licensing compounders in tech. Every device you see shipped with Atmos or Vision baked in sends a royalty check to Dolby. The company has been steadily extending that footprint into automotive, and Atmos audio in EV cabins is becoming a spec sheet requirement, not a premium upsell.

Your forward setup is the automotive attach ramp. Legacy Dolby was TVs, headphones, phones. The new leg is cars and streaming platforms, where royalty rates run higher and the installed base compounds annually. Free cash flow conversion sits above 90%, and the stock closed Friday at $65.27.

Your risk is quarter-to-quarter lumpiness. Licensing revenue fluctuates with OEM shipment timing, and any weakness in consumer electronics dents the top line in the short term. But at a mid-to-high twenties multiple with expanding FCF, you're not paying for perfection here. You're paying for boring compounding.

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The Contrarian AI Bet Sitting at a Trough

HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS)

HubSpot has become the punching bag of enterprise SaaS in the agent era. Shares closed Friday at $240.01, down roughly 49% over the past year and 54% below the 52-week high, management just cut its customer growth forecast to 5,000 per quarter, and the market has stopped believing that Breeze AI can offset the pressure on seat-based software. That is exactly the kind of setup where fresh money starts making it back. Sentiment on this name is bombed out, which is your edge if you have the stomach.

Your forward catalyst is agentic. HubSpot has introduced Agent Hub and Agent Builder in public beta for Pro and Enterprise customers, giving teams one place to view AI agents, track live status and results, and build custom agents and agentic workflows from CRM data, and on August 5 the company added Jerry Dischler to its Board of Directors, an executive who most recently led the development of AI agents for customer service and sales at Google. Q2 adjusted EPS came in at $3.26 versus $3.02 and revenue at $911.7M versus $898.3M, and management raised FY26 adjusted EPS guidance. Real evidence of Agent Hub monetization on the next print shifts the narrative overnight.

Your risk is equally real. Another cut to customer additions and the stock retests lows while management credibility takes another chunk. Size this small. It is a speculation, not a core position, and you should treat it that way.

Everything Else

  • 📊 These 7 stocks are built for decades, not quarters, with the strength to keep paying through recessions, rate hikes, and full blown crashes.

  • 🧩 Samsung raised chipmaking prices by as much as 15% for some advanced foundry services as AI demand tightens capacity across the industry.

  • 🖥️ Super Micro secured more than $60 billion in orders in its latest quarter and now expects gross margins to come in above its previous forecast.

  • 🧠 Etched, Cerebras and other challengers are keeping pressure on Nvidia as specialized AI chips attract billions in fresh funding and customer commitments.

  • 🔐 SiTime is drawing fresh attention as its timing-chip business benefits from increasingly complex AI servers, networking gear and Apple’s shift toward more in-house silicon.

  • 🧱 Meta is preparing to put its custom AI chip into production next month as it works to double computing capacity and reduce its reliance on outside GPU suppliers.

That's our coverage for today; thanks for reading! Reply to this email with feedback or any tech stocks you want me to check out.

Best Regards,
—Noah Zelvis
Tech Stock Insider