Most AI-infrastructure coverage this autumn is price targets. The numbers that can be checked are fewer, and the best of them come from one company's SEC filings. Micron Technology's capital spending, the money it puts into factories and equipment, was $7.676 billion in fiscal 2023 and $8.386 billion in fiscal 2024.1 In fiscal 2025 it reached $15.857 billion, roughly double the year before.1 Micron is a memory maker, and the Via News entity graph records it as a supplier to Amazon Web Services and Meta Platforms and as located in Taiwan.2 For anyone tracking who is building the compute behind AI, the spending is a better signal than any rating.
One limit up front: our dossier has nothing on model releases, agent adoption or GPU orders. This piece covers the hardware and power side of the AI story, and it covers that side only to the extent the evidence is checkable.
The spending is accelerating, not just large
The quarterly figures tell the same story, and they are steeper. Micron's first-quarter capex was $1.796 billion in fiscal 2024, $3.206 billion in fiscal 2025 and $5.389 billion in fiscal 2026, about three times the level of two years earlier.1 These are SEC-filed figures that Via News has checked against the source, so we state them plainly.
Cash moved the same way. Micron held $10.163 billion in fiscal Q3 2025, $13.908 billion in fiscal Q2 2026 and $24.995 billion in fiscal Q3 2026.3 To put $25 billion in perspective, Baker Hughes, the energy-equipment group, forecast $27.35 billion of revenue for all of 2026.4 Micron's cash balance is close to what that company expects to bring in over a year. The two figures measure different things, but they give a sense of scale.
The cost side rose more gently. Micron's cost of revenue, what it spends to make what it sells, was $16.956 billion in fiscal 2023, $19.498 billion in fiscal 2024 and $22.505 billion in fiscal 2025.5 In the second quarter it was $6.105 billion in fiscal 2026 against $5.090 billion a year earlier.5 Our dossier does not include Micron's revenue, so we cannot calculate profit or margins and will not guess. We can say that capex and cash grew much faster than the cost of making the product. That is consistent with a company expanding capacity and funding it from a growing cash balance, but it is not proof of it.
The sell-side chorus, and how much weight it carries
On September 4, 2026, Lynx Equity Strategies analyst K.C. Rajkumar published a bullish analysis rating Micron and Sandisk clear buys, and ASML rose more than 4% in a sympathy rally the same day.6 Those events are in our record, but the analyst's reasoning is not, so we cannot say what the call rested on.
The same narrative groups several other mid-2026 calls under the infrastructure theme. Digital Realty raised core FFO guidance, a profit measure used for property companies. Evercore ISI set a Street-high $350 target on Bloom Energy. A bank reiterated a buy on NuScale.6 The Evercore and Digital Realty items come from our narrative synthesis, not from a source document in this dossier, so treat them as reported rather than verified.
The other two calls rest on specific documents, and their reliability varies. A Zacks-style "Bull of the Day" piece on Bloom says its reliable, dispatchable power for a volatile demand profile sets it apart from competitors, a claim attributed to Nicholas Amicucci.7 That piece also reports Bloom's inclusion in the Russell 1000 large-cap index, so funds tracking that index would now be expected to hold it. Our dossier gives no weighting, so we do not know how much. Our measured reliability for that source is 46%, meaning fewer than half of 520 checked claims held up.7
The NuScale call is weaker still. Bank of America analyst Rinny Singh reiterated a buy in early August with a $12 target, implying roughly 24% upside, while the shares had fallen nearly 40% since the start of 2026.8 The only article we have on it is a Motley Fool piece whose measured reliability is 22%, but that is based on just 18 checked claims.8 A small sample makes that score weak evidence in either direction, and we do not read it as a verdict on the call.
Power equipment may be the most direct link between this buildout and the physical economy. At Baker Hughes, Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Simonelli described IET order momentum as "orders doubling year-over-year to a record $7.1 billion."4 An analyst, Carlos Escalante, asked about the "drivers of record IET orders and margins."4 Nothing in our excerpt ties those orders to AI data centers, so we do not claim a link.
The stretched end: quantum
The dossier's clearest example of speculative frontier tech is D-Wave Quantum. Analyst Melissa Tucker says the stock trades at a stretched 171 times sales against peers, with projected 2026 revenue near $35 million and a fair-value estimate of $9.50 a share. She says this implies roughly 40% downside from the levels she was reviewing, and cites a delayed technology roadmap and D-Wave's reliance on SkyWare while IonQ's acquisition of that supplier is pending.9
The price has been volatile. After a 20% surge on a Monday, helped by an expanded AT&T partnership and a bullish analyst initiation, the stock fell about 10% the next day to $17.64, still 25% lower over the month.9 The entity graph lists IonQ and Rigetti as D-Wave competitors.2 D-Wave said it would report second-quarter results on August 6, 2026.6 We include this to show the spread between companies with filed capex and companies priced on promise. It is not a forecast. The narrative also says SpaceX shares are down more than 40% from their highs, with no supporting document.6
What is not in the AI trade
The same narrative says consumer names are weak. Bank of America's Lorraine Hutchinson lowered her Nike price target because the sales recovery is taking longer than expected.10 Wendy's fell nearly 6% on September 16, 2026, after Seaport Global initiated coverage with a neutral rating, extending a decline since a take-private plan collapsed.11 Biotech is framed as a separate story. JPMorgan's Jessica Fye argues several trends are developing at once in large-cap biotech: improving profitability, broader commercial diversification, a steady flow of clinical catalysts and continued business-development opportunities.12 Goldman Sachs resumed Iovance at a buy with a $15 target on September 24, 2026.13 We see little connection between these threads and AI, and the narrative itself calls the biotech link loose.
A July 4 market recap also noted rotation out of semiconductor and other technology stocks.14 Our excerpt cuts off before the detail, so we cannot say how large the rotation was. It is a reminder that the AI-hardware rally has not been one-directional.
What to watch
- Micron's next capex print. Spending that tripled in two years has to be absorbed by demand. The filings will show whether the pace holds.
- What Micron does with $25 billion in cash. The dossier does not say, so any plan is yet to be shown.
- Baker Hughes IET orders against its Horizon 2 target. The headline target is orders above $45 billion, and the Chart integration is the other item to follow.4
- Whether the IonQ and SkyWare deal closes. D-Wave's roadmap risk depends on it.9
- Evidence that the sell-side claims are held up by filings, especially for Bloom and NuScale, where our measured source reliability is lowest.