AI foundry stocks

Before an AI chip can be packaged it has to be fabricated, and leading-edge manufacturing is the most concentrated stage of the entire chain — a very small number of foundries run the newest nodes at scale. Around them sits a supplier web most investors never see: the silicon wafers the chips are printed on, the specialty process chemicals and gases each fab consumes, the yield learning that decides how many good die come off a wafer, and the EDA and design-IP tools without which nothing gets designed at all. Constraints here propagate to everyone downstream. This theme groups the companies most exposed to the foundry and manufacturing parts of the AI value chain.