AI Boom and Energy Shortage: Two Growth Opportunities in Tech and Infrastructure

The Semiconductor Play: AMD’s Path in AI Computing

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) has gained significant momentum, with shares appreciating nearly 50% over the past six months as the company positions itself in the trillion-dollar artificial intelligence compute market. While AMD trails behind Nvidia in graphics processing unit market share, its trajectory tells a compelling story for long-term investors.

The real driver is accelerating demand for AMD’s data center solutions. In the most recent quarter, the data center segment expanded 22% year-over-year, reflecting growing adoption of its Instinct GPUs among major cloud providers. The company’s roadmap includes its MI350 GPUs driving current growth, with MI450 versions already lined up for deployment by major customers including OpenAI and Oracle in 2026.

A pivotal catalyst arrives with the Helios rack system launch in 2026, designed to close the competitive gap with Nvidia’s enterprise data center offerings. Weighing 7,000 pounds and integrating AMD’s MI455 GPUs with EPYC processors, Helios delivers the memory bandwidth necessary for AI inference workloads. Beyond this, management has announced MI500 GPU development for 2027, promising a thousand-fold performance increase—signaling confidence in a sustained product pipeline.

From a valuation perspective, AMD trades at 33 times forward earnings while analysts project 45% annualized earnings growth through the medium term, aligning with management’s 35% revenue growth targets. This combination suggests the market is pricing in conservative expectations relative to the company’s growth trajectory in AI infrastructure.

The Infrastructure Angle: Bitcoin Miners Turning Data Center Operators

While semiconductor companies chase AI computing, another opportunity emerges from the physical infrastructure gap: the looming power shortage for data centers. Next-generation chips from both AMD and Nvidia demand substantially more electricity than existing systems, yet data center operators already face constrained power availability.

CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) controls a valuable asset in this environment—over 1.3 gigawatts of owned power generation capacity, land, and data center infrastructure. The company has successfully operated its Bitcoin mining operation, currently holding more than 13,000 Bitcoin from mining activities while generating $1.25 earnings per share in fiscal 2025.

Management is pivoting this asset base toward the emerging AI infrastructure market. CleanSpark has secured a 285-megawatt site in Texas designated for AI data center development targeting hyperscalers. Additional capacity includes a 250-megawatt facility in Sandersville, Georgia, and over 100 megawatts in the greater Atlanta region. These assets carry substantial economic value—recent industry transactions demonstrate the premium placed on data center capacity, with CoreWeave securing a 15-year, $11 billion contract with Applied Digital for 400 megawatts, while Hut 8 locked in a 15-year, $7 billion agreement with Anthropic for 245 megawatts.

The primary execution risk lies in construction timelines and securing tenant commitments; however, CleanSpark’s profitable mining operations provide a financial cushion while the company develops its AI infrastructure pipeline. Trading at merely 12 times earnings, the valuation essentially prices in the Bitcoin mining business alone, offering investors exposure to the data center opportunity with minimal premium.

The Convergence: Why These Opportunities Matter

The semiconductor upgrade cycle and infrastructure buildout represent two sides of the same trend—accelerating demand from artificial intelligence adoption. AMD benefits from this through direct chip sales to hyperscalers; CleanSpark benefits through providing the power infrastructure those hyperscalers require. Both companies trade at valuations that suggest meaningful upside potential if execution proceeds as planned over the next five years.