33 Most Important AI Companies You Should Pay Attention To

23.  Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 78 

YTD Return as of August 1: 43%  

Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) markets semiconductor processing equipment. The company is the third leading supplier of wafer fab equipment. This equipment is used by chipmakers in their chip manufacturing process. The demand for these chips has skyrocketed as firms seek to power their data centers with these chips for AI tasks. Over the past few years, the company has benefited from a focus on etch and deposition, two of the fastest-growing segments within the wafer market. These segments are growing faster than others due to increased demand in leading edge logic and memory.

Timothy Archer, the CEO of Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX), commented during the second quarter earnings call that the power of AI as a transformative business tool was still yet to be fully realized. He noted that the focus on AI model training was driving strong demand for GPUs and HBM. He added that as AI use cases expanded, investments for AI-enabled edge devices would play particularly well to the strengths of his firm in the long term.