Micron’s Record Stock Rally Looks Tame Next To This 520% AI Chip Winner

Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU ) has been one of Wall Street’s biggest artificial intelligence winners in 2026, with shares soaring roughly 301% year to date as demand for high-bandwidth memory exploded. But one lesser-known semiconductor stock has quietly done even better. MaxLinear Inc. (NASDAQ: MXL ), a communications chipmaker with a market capitalization of roughly $9.5 billion, has surged more than 520% so far this year—outperforming Micron by more than 220 percentage points while attracting far less investor attention. The reason isn’t another memory boom. It’s the next layer of AI infrastructure. MaxLinear Is Riding AI’s Connectivity Boom While Micron has benefited from soaring demand for HBM used in AI accelerators, MaxLinear has emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of another fast-growing market: high-speed optical connectivity. The company...