These 4 stocks grew by 200% or more this year
A gain of more than 200% in less than eight months is not a common occurrence on the US market. This year, however, several companies achieved it, and they all share one thing: they stand on the supply side of building AI infrastructure. While the S&P 500 index has added roughly 14% since the start of the year, these four stocks have more than tripled their value. Why did they grow and how much of their future is already priced in?
Key points
Four stocks added over 200% in just eight months. While the S&P 500 is up about 14% this year, this group outperformed the broader market by roughly fifteenfold.
The extreme growth is not just AI hype, but a real change in their business. A shortage of key capacities shifted negotiating power toward suppliers and, for some companies, pushed margins to levels that were hard to imagine just two years ago.
One of the companies increased quarterly revenue by 346% and achieved a gross margin of almost 85%. Yet, based on expected earnings, it trades at a multiple that at first glance seems absurdly low.
Other companies have future demand secured for years ahead. Tens of billions of dollars in backlog, strategic agreements worth 100 billion, and capacity promised to customers until 2028 are in play.
The year 2026 so far belongs to companies that do not sell artificial intelligence as a product but supply the hardware for it. While the broad market grows only modestly (compared to recent years), a group of hardware and infrastructure stocks has posted triple-digit gains since the start of the year. But this is not a broad phenomenon across technology. On the contrary, it is a very narrow selection of companies whose business economics have fundamentally changed over the past twelve months.
The common denominator is shortage. Shortage of memory chips, shortage of storage capacity, shortage of servers, and in the case of one of these companies, shortage of reliable voice infrastructure for AI agents. Where demand persistently exceeds supply, negotiating power shifts from customer to supplier. And this shift has translated into margins this year that no one would have expected from these companies two years ago.
However, high year-to-date gains are not in themselves an investment thesis. Moreover, three of the four companies are in deeply cyclical industries where the best numbers typically come at the peak of the cycle. That is why they currently exhibit a combination of metrics that appears illogical at first glance: record profits and historically low multiples. Let’s take a closer look.