LA Today Wire
– This is the script of CNBC's financial news report for China's CCTV on SEPTEMBER 22, 2026. AMD joining the trillion-dollar club demonstrates that artificial intelligence is not only spawning new titan corporations, but also reshaping the composition of the world's most valuable companies. Currently, only about a dozen publicly traded companies worldwide boast market capitalizations exceeding 1 trillion dollars.
Nearly half of these trillion-dollar giants hail from the semiconductor industry. If key artificial intelligence players like Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta are included, the trillion-dollar company cohort has become intensely concentrated within artificial intelligence and its upstream and downstream supply chains. AMD shares have recently posted five consecutive winning sessions, accumulating a 25% gain over a short span.
Since this past spring, the stock has rallied on a parabolic trajectory, more than tripling from its April levels. LISA SU AMD Chair and Chief Executive Officer "We have much, much stronger customer visibility in this time frame, and what customers are telling us is, you know, they want a lot more compute." Beyond AMD, semiconductor and artificial intelligence stocks saw broad-based gains during Monday's US trading session. A key catalyst driving the rally was the explosive popularity of Meta's newly launched AI shopping agent, Muse.
This breakthrough has led market participants to view consumer-facing AI agents as truly entering a phase of large-scale adoption. Unlike generative AI model training, which relies heavily on graphics processing units, or GPUs, the proliferation of AI agents promises to significantly boost demand for central processing units, or CPUs. This dynamic triggered a collective rally among CPU-focused semiconductor firms such as AMD, Intel, and Arm, whereas GPU leader Nvidia recorded relatively modest gains.
While artificial intelligence stocks continue to draw massive capital flows in public markets, AI concepts remain equally sought after in private markets. According to multiple media reports, Japan's SoftBank Group plans to issue over 11 billion dollars in bonds, primarily to fund an additional investment in OpenAI. If completed, this transaction would mark the largest non-financial corporate bond issuance ever recorded in the Asia-Pacific region.
SoftBank's total public investment commitments to OpenAI have reached 65 billion dollars. To back this massive bet, SoftBank has employed various financial leverage tools, including pledging a portion of its stake in Arm. Rating agency Fitch assigned a BB+ rating to the proposed bond issuance, placing it in non-investment grade territory, commonly known as junk bond status.
That designation serves as a clear reminder of the elevated risks accompanying potential high yields. Although calls for artificial intelligence development to slow down or proceed with caution are growing louder, the extreme concentration of capital behind AI makes portfolio diversification increasingly difficult, heightening market focus on potential systemic financial risks. We will continue following these developments.
Source: CNBC
