The hottest AI trades right now don't have any code in sight. While apps and frontier models capture headlines, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang points to a “five-layer cake” in which storage, chips, and energy underpin the aforementioned two. With an estimated $85T flowing into that foundation, markets are starting to follow the money down the stack.
- Investors have already caught on to semiconductors, which now account for 17% of the S&P 500 — but the constraint is shifting downstream.
- That transition is already showing up in earnings — Caterpillar beat expectations, raising its outlook as AI demand boosted revenue 22% from last year.
Pull back the curtain: Beyond, three infrastructure names are catching attention. Williams moves ~16% of US natural gas, and a new pipeline just broke ground. Then, wiring oligopolist Eaton posted 16 consecutive quarters of hyperscaler bookings growth, running backlogs into 2027. Finally, Cameco, the largest pure-play Western uranium miner, has seen four Big Tech firms sign nuclear deals over the past 18 months. When it comes to being boring, these three aren’t complaining.
