The line tracks the share-price performance of a basket of large US hyperscalers (Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and Oracle) against the MSCI USA Semiconductors index, with both starting from the same point in 2022. A falling line means semiconductors are outpacing the hyperscalers, and the trend has been steadily lower for more than three years. Chipmakers have captured an outsized share of the returns from the buildout in AI computing power, while investors have grown more skeptical of the hyperscalers funding much of that spending and have questioned their return on it.
Source: Datastream, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research