Tech companies including Apple (AAPL.US), Dell (DELL.US), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE.US), and Seagate (STX.US) became the focal point of the U.S. stock market on Tuesday, following a latest research report released by prominent Wall Street investment firm Bernstein on Tuesday Eastern Time. The report highlighted that artificial intelligence technology development trends, particularly the anticipated massive AI inference systems by 2030, are expected to create a trillion-dollar "super blue ocean" opportunity that should bring long-term benefits to these large tech companies focused on IT hardware and consumer electronics.

Undoubtedly, global cloud computing giant Oracle, which just announced contract backlog far exceeding market expectations at $455 billion, along with global AI ASIC chip "super leader" Broadcom's strong performance and future outlook announced last week, have significantly strengthened the "long-term bull market narrative" for AI infrastructure sectors including AI GPUs, ASICs, and HBM.

The AI computing power demand driven by generative AI applications and AI agents at the inference end can be described as "boundless as the stars and sea," expected to drive the artificial intelligence computing infrastructure market to continue exhibiting exponential growth. "AI inference systems" are also what Jensen Huang considers NVIDIA's largest revenue source in the future.

In the view of Wall Street investment giants Loop Capital and Wedbush, the global artificial intelligence infrastructure investment wave centered on AI computing hardware is far from over and is only at the beginning. Driven by an unprecedented "AI computing demand storm," this round of AI investment wave could reach $2 trillion in scale. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang further predicts that AI infrastructure spending will reach $3-4 trillion by 2030, with project scale and scope bringing significant long-term growth opportunities for NVIDIA.

**Apple as "Best Entry Point for AI Inference Revolution," Dell Benefits from AI Server Shipment Growth**

Since September 11, Apple's stock performance has been impressive, rising over 5% during this period and recovering all losses from early September. According to Goldman Sachs' tracking of Apple.com pre-order data, globally, delivery times for all iPhone 17 models are longer than previous generation products, highlighting that despite some users criticizing the new iPhone 17 for lack of highlights after the launch event, actual pre-order demand is very strong driven by AI and performance upgrades. The standard and Pro Max models saw the most increase, with delivery times extending by 8 days respectively. The Chinese mainland market performance was particularly outstanding, with average delivery times increasing by 17 days to a 27-day waiting period.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently defended iPhone's enduring strong influence, stating that even with the emergence of complementary intelligent electronic devices, iPhone will remain the most central to people's lives in the upcoming era of comprehensive artificial intelligence.

"Despite market concerns about short-term AI bubble concerns, we believe IT hardware and consumer electronics still have significant upside potential at the long-term level," wrote the analyst team from Bernstein. "While results have huge uncertainty ranges, in our 2030 baseline forecast scenario, we conservatively set enterprise-side inference cost scale at approximately $1.3 trillion (implying expected compound annual growth rate of about 67% during 2025-2030 period)."

"We believe continuous model improvement and iterative updates are key leading indicators, and remind that hyperscale capital expenditure may be a lagging indicator. Beyond our positive outlook on long-term prospects, we also believe recent early signs of artificial intelligence boom development remain healthy, and overall we maintain a positive view on this theme," stated the Bernstein analyst team.

Regarding Apple, the firm called this tech giant with iPhone and iPad consumer electronics product lines "one of the best entry points for the artificial intelligence inference revolution." Bernstein's analyst team believes this tech giant under Tim Cook's leadership has the best AI positioning among peers and is most likely to benefit, but the firm noted that Apple also faces the highest risk if execution falls short.

Statistics show Apple's ecosystem has 2.35 billion active devices, meaning once inference capabilities are integrated at the system level, developers can "plug and play" to reach massive end users, which is precisely the core engineering advantage of an "artificial intelligence entry point."

Apple's AI application tool—Apple Intelligence—is designed by Apple to prioritize local operation, calling larger models through Private Cloud Compute (PCC) when necessary, and "moving Apple's endpoint security model to the cloud," providing verifiable transparency and minimal data residency, which is highly attractive for building sensitive scenarios (personal and enterprise data).

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are likewise expected to become long-term beneficiaries of the AI investment theme, as Bernstein believes significant expansion in AI server shipments should drive "substantial" profit and free cash flow growth. However, the firm holds a more cautious view on another AI server leader Super Micro Computer (SMCI.US), believing the company faces "execution challenges and valuation concerns."

AI server giant Dell and one of its biggest competitors Super Micro Computer have recently been continuously expanding capacity to manufacture servers equipped with NVIDIA's latest AI GPUs—namely B200/GB200 based on Blackwell, as well as more advanced BG300 AI server clusters, to win larger-scale business from companies building and using artificial intelligence applications.

Numerous generative AI application software driving models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Sora text-to-video large models all require immensely vast data processing capabilities and increasingly expanding hardware-side AI computing resources. Through its close multi-year cooperation relationship with NVIDIA, Dell uses the latest NVIDIA GPUs and integrated complete CUDA acceleration tools to provide powerful GPU acceleration capabilities for AI training/inference workloads—an indispensable technical component for global enterprises deploying AI technology. Therefore, Dell's deep cooperation relationship with NVIDIA ensures optimal priority for hardware and software integration and performance optimization.

**Two Storage Giants—Seagate and SanDisk Also Favored by Bernstein**

Additionally, Bernstein's analyst team pointed out that massive AI inference-end computing demand undoubtedly catalyzes long-term surge in data storage demand. The firm believes Seagate (STX.US) and SanDisk (SNDK.US) are expected to be viewed by the market as storage product providers that benefit most from storage demand surge.

As of Monday's U.S. stock market close, NAND flash leader SanDisk's year-to-date stock price gain reached an astonishing 500%, storage giant Western Digital providing hard disk drive (HDD) and NAND flash/SSD products rose 128% during the same period, while one of its biggest storage competitors—another global HDD leader Seagate Technology—also recorded strong gains of 148%.

In this unprecedented AI infrastructure fever wave where large global enterprises and various government departments are investing heavily in AI deployment, demand for core storage chips closely related to artificial intelligence training/inference systems remains extremely hot, driving Micron's data center business revenue to surge dramatically, including HBM storage systems, server-level DDR5, and enterprise SSDs.

As breakthrough AI application tools like AI agents penetrate various industries globally, bringing massive "AI inference-end computing demand," it means the future prospects for AI infrastructure sectors including AI chips, HBM storage systems, enterprise SSDs, and high-performance networking and power equipment will remain boundless as the stars and sea.

Enterprises' urgent need to improve efficiency and reduce operational costs has recently driven widespread adoption of two core categories of AI application software—generative AI applications and AI agents. The emergence of AI agents means artificial intelligence is beginning to evolve from information assistance tools to highly intelligent productivity tools.

AI agents represented by OpenAI Deep Research and Manus can automate repetitive tasks, achieve big data analysis and summarization based on incredibly powerful AI large models, and provide real-time monitoring insight reports as well as make appropriate decisions for extremely complex situations in very short time, thereby improving enterprise operational efficiency. For personal learning and work efficiency, the logic is basically similar for efficiency enhancement.

AI agents can also efficiently participate in all stages of large-scale projects across various fields globally from blueprint planning to implementation, significantly accelerating project progress.

"We expect data center storage to continue growing at approximately 23% compound annual growth rate through 2030, with both HDD and NAND manufacturers significantly benefiting from continuously surging storage demand brought by AI inference," wrote Bernstein's analyst team. "In the [hard disk drive] field, the relatively stable oligopoly structure should bring steady profit and free cash flow growth, with Seagate in the best position due to its leadership in HAMR technology. On the NAND side, SanDisk should achieve significant profit growth as the 'new storage paradigm' fully penetrates."

Finally, the firm also shared exclusive views and comments on the quantum computing revolution, stating that veteran American tech giant IBM (IBM.US) may ultimately become the industry leader in the quantum computing field.

"Despite being viewed as a traditional player in decline, IBM's massive investment in quantum computing innovation has begun to generate some returns, driving the firm's performance back to a growth trajectory," analysts wrote in a report.