ChainThink News, June 2: According to recent investment bank research reports, multiple institutions have released AI infrastructure-related analyses over the weekend, decomposing the expansion of AI compute into a "two-tier bottleneck" ranking: Storage/Memory > SSD Controller > Data Center Power/Liquid Cooling > GPU/Cloud Platforms > MLCC > AI Security.

The demand for AI data center compute has extended beyond the GPU layer into backend domains such as storage, power supply, and thermal management. Supply-demand imbalances have prompted institutions to significantly upgrade ratings and target prices for relevant assets, a trend closely aligned with the recent surge in memory giants Micron (MU) and SK Hynix joining the trillion-dollar market cap club and strong performance in after-hours tech stocks.

In terms of specific equities, Susquehanna and GF Securities assigned Positive/Buy ratings to SNDK (SanDisk), with target prices of $3,250 and $1,277 respectively, citing severe supply-demand imbalance in NAND and enterprise SSDs, along with continuously upward revisions in cloud providers’ AI storage demands.

Raymond James raised MU (Micron)’s target price from $530 to $1,100 on June 1, maintaining its Outperform rating. The firm attributes this to robust AI memory demand, rising HBM/DRAM prices, and capacity expansion, pushing MU close to the $1,000 mark and breaking through the trillion-dollar market cap threshold.

Other rating adjustments include: BofA raised SIMO (Silicon Motion)’s target price from $320 to $450 while maintaining its Buy rating;

Goldman Sachs and multiple Seeking Alpha reports maintained Buy ratings on NVDA (Nvidia) with a target price of $285; Truist upgraded AMZN (Amazon)’s target price from $310 to $320 and assigned a Buy rating;

Jefferies and Morgan Stanley assigned Buy ratings to VST (Vistra), while UBS and BofA assigned Buy ratings to ECL (Ecolab), with target price ranges between $325 and $345.