Weekly Winners | Intel Soars 23%; Synopsys Surges 16%; CrowdStrike Jumps 15%; Applied Materials and Seagate Gain 13%

This week, which stocks lagged or dragged? Weekly Winners column keeps up with market trends, helping Tigers sort out the week's hottest sectors, stock winners and important news.

Below are top 10 S&P 500 stock gainers for the week ended September 19:

Nvidia Bets Big on Intel with $5 Billion Stake and Chip Partnership

Nvidia on Thursday said it will invest $5 billion in Intel, throwing its heft behind the struggling U.S. chip foundry, but stopped short of giving Intel a crucial manufacturing deal.

The pact, which also includes a plan for Intel and Nvidia to jointly develop PC and data center chips, represents a potential risk to Taiwan’s TSMC. TSMC currently manufactures Nvidia’s flagship processors, business that the world’s most valuable company could one day extend to Intel. AMD, which competes with Intel for supplying chips to data centers, also stands to lose thanks to Nvidia’s backing.

Chip Stocks Rise on Nvidia Investment in Intel

Shares of some companies in the chip industry rose this week after Nvidia said it was investing $5 billion in Intel.

Synopsys surged 16% and Applied Materials shares rose 13% this week; Western Digital up 9%; KLA , Lam and Cadence Design up 8%.

Wedbush analysts said in a note Thursday that the Nvidia investment in Intel was a boon for the entire U.S. tech industry, helping transition Intel from "laggard to catalyst" in the development of the AI industry in the U.S.

CrowdStrike Talked a Big Game at Its Investor Day, and Investors Love It

CrowdStrike surged on Thursday after using its investor day alongside the Fal.Con conference to lay out more ambitious targets and a heavier artificial intelligence (AI) push.

Shares rose 15% this week as management pointed to stronger net-new annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth in fiscal 2027 and reiterated a long-term ARR goal that underscores confidence in the platform's resilience.

The cybersecurity specialist sells a cloud-native suite that protects endpoints, identities, cloud workloads, and data, and it's increasingly weaving agentic AI into everything it does. The near-term read-through is straightforward: If growth reaccelerates as promised, investors may be getting what they've been waiting for since last year's disruption.

Seagate gets massive upgrades

Bank of America upgraded its price target on Seagate from $170 to $215 while reaffirming its "buy" rating, based on a more optimistic outlook for AI spending.

Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh increased his target on Seagate by an even greater amount, from $160 all the way to $245. Rakesh's upgrade follows channel checks indicating strong demand and rising prices for both hard disk drives and NAND flash.