Bernstein outlines the 2030 tech landscape: AI reasoning dominates the trillion-dollar blue ocean betting on Apple, AI servers and storage

The Zhitong Finance App learned that technology companies such as Apple (AAPL.US), Dell (DELL.US), HPE (HPE.US), and Seagate (STX.US) became the core focus of attention in the US stock market on Tuesday. Earlier, the latest research report released by Bernstein (Bernstein), a well-known Wall Street investment institution on Tuesday EST, said that AI technology trends, especially the trillion-dollar “super blue ocean” that is expected to be brought by the immense AI inference system by 2030, should focus on IT hardware and consumer electronics Big tech companies bring long-term benefits.

Needless to say, the global cloud computing giant Oracle, which has just announced a contract reserve of 455 billion US dollars that far exceeds market expectations, and the strong performance and future outlook announced last week by Broadcom, the “superdominant” AI ASIC chip, have greatly strengthened the “long-term bull market narrative” of AI computing power infrastructure sectors such as AI GPUs, ASICs, and HBM. The demand for AI computing power brought about by generative AI applications and inference terminals dominated by AI agents can be called a “sea of stars”, which is expected to drive the AI computing power infrastructure market to continue to show exponential growth. “AI inference systems” are also Hwang In-hoon's biggest source of future revenue for Nvidia.

According to Wall Street investment giants Loop Capital and Wedbush, the global AI infrastructure investment wave with AI computing power hardware at the core is far from over; it is only just beginning. Driven by an unprecedented “storm of AI computing power demand,” the scale of this round of AI investment is expected to reach 2 trillion US dollars. Nvidia CEO Hwang In-hoon also predicted that by 2030, AI infrastructure spending will reach 3 trillion to 4 trillion US dollars, and the scale and scope of the project will bring significant long-term growth opportunities to Nvidia.

Apple is the “best entry point for the AI inference revolution”, and Dell benefits from increased AI server shipments

Since September 11, Apple's stock price has performed brilliantly, rising by more than 5% during the period, recovering all of the decline in early September. According to Apple..com pre-order data tracked by Goldman Sachs, the delivery time for all iPhone 17 models is longer than the previous generation, highlighting that although the new iPhone 17 was complained of by some users after the press conference, actual pre-order demand was very strong, driven by AI and performance upgrades. Among them, the standard version and Pro Max models increased the most, and the delivery time was extended by 8 days, respectively. Meanwhile, the mainland China market performed particularly well. Delivery times increased by an average of 17 days, reaching a 27-day waiting period.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently defended the iPhone's enduring and strong influence, saying that even with the emergence of complementary intelligent electronic devices, the iPhone will still be the core of people's lives in the era of artificial intelligence that is about to fully open.

“Although short-term market concerns about the AI bubble remain, we believe IT hardware and consumer electronics still have significant upside in the long term,” the team of analysts from Bernstein wrote. “Although there is a huge margin of uncertainty about the results, in our 2030 benchmark scenario, we conservatively set the estimated enterprise-side cost scale at around $1.3 trillion (meaning an expected CAGR of around 67% for the 2025-2030 period).”

“We consider continuous model improvements and iterations to be a key leading indicator, and we are reminded that hyperscale capital expenditure may be a lagging indicator. In addition to being positive about the long-term outlook, we also believe that the early signs relating to the recent boom in artificial intelligence are still healthy, and in general, we still have a positive view on this subject.” Bernstein's team of analysts said.

As far as Apple is concerned, the agency says that the tech giant with consumer electronics product lines such as iPhones and iPads is “one of the best entrances to the artificial intelligence reasoning revolution.” Bernstein's team of analysts believes that the tech giant, led by Tim Cook, is one of the tech giants with the best artificial intelligence layout in the sector and is most likely to benefit, but the agency said that if Apple's execution is poor, the risk is also greatest.

According to statistics, the number of active devices in the Apple ecosystem has reached 2.35 billion, which means that once reasoning capabilities are integrated at the system level, developers can “plug and play” to reach a large number of end users. This is the core engineering advantage of the “artificial intelligence portal.” Apple's AI application tool - Apple Intelligence is designed by Apple to prioritize local operation, call a larger model through Private Cloud Compute (PCC) when necessary, and “move” Apple's terminal security model to the cloud, providing verifiable transparency and minimal data residency, which is very attractive for constructing sensitive scenarios (personal and corporate data).

Dell Technologies and HPE are also expected to be long-term beneficiaries of the AI investment theme, because in Bernstein's view, a significant expansion in AI server shipments should drive a “significant” increase in profits and free cash flow. However, the agency is more cautious about Ultramicrocomputer (SMCI.US), another AI server leader, and believes that the company faces “execution-level challenges and valuation concerns.”

AI server giant Dell, and the company's ultra-micro computer, one of its biggest rivals for AI servers, have recently been increasing production capacity to manufacture Nvidia's latest AI GPUs — that is, B200/GB200 based on Blackwell, and more advanced BG300 AI server clusters to win larger scale business from companies that build and use artificial intelligence applications. Many generative AI applications that drive large models of ChatGPT, Claude, and Sora Wensheng's video all require enormous data processing capabilities and increasingly expanding hardware-side AI computing power resources.

Through a close partnership with Nvidia over many years, Dell uses the latest Nvidia GPUs and integrates a full set of CUDA acceleration tools to provide powerful GPU acceleration capabilities for global enterprises to deploy AI technology — AI training/inference workloads. As a result, Dell's deep partnership with Nvidia ensures optimal integration of hardware and software and top priority for performance optimization.

Two major storage giants — Seagate and SanDisk — are also favored by Bernstein

Furthermore, Bernstein's team of analysts also pointed out that the demand for large-scale AI inference computing power has undoubtedly spawned a long-term surge in data storage demand. The agency believes that Seagate (STX.US) and SanDisk (SNDK.US) are expected to be viewed by the market as storage product providers that benefit the most from the surge in storage demand.

By the close of the US stock market on Monday, the stock price of NAND flash memory leader SanDisk had risen by an astonishing 500% during the year. Western Digital, a storage giant that provides hard drives (HDD) and NAND flash/SSD products, rose 128% during the same period. Seagate Technology, one of its biggest storage competitors, another global hard drive (HDD) leader, also recorded a strong 148% increase.

Amidst an unprecedented wave of AI infrastructure frenzy where large global enterprises and various government departments are spending huge sums of money to deploy AI, demand for core memory chips closely related to artificial intelligence training/inference systems is still extremely hot, driving a sharp increase in revenue from the Micron data center business, including HBM storage systems, server-level DDR5, and enterprise-grade SSDs.

As breakthrough AI application tools such as AI agents penetrate all walks of life around the world, bringing about sky-level “AI inference computing power requirements,” it means that the future prospects for AI computing power infrastructure such as AI chips, HBM storage systems, enterprise-grade SSDs, and high-performance networks and power equipment will still be a sea of stars. The urgent need for companies to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs can be described as vigorously promoting the two core categories of AI application software — generative AI applications and the widespread application of AI agents. Among them, the emergence of AI agents means that artificial intelligence has begun to evolve from an information aid tool to a highly intelligent productivity tool.

AI agents such as OpenAI Deep Research and Manus can automate repetitive tasks, analyze and summarize big data based on extremely powerful AI models, and provide real-time monitoring and insight reports and make appropriate decisions in extremely complex situations in a very short time, thereby improving business efficiency. For personal learning and work efficiency, it is also basically the same logic of increasing efficiency. AI agents can also efficiently participate in all stages of large-scale projects in various fields around the world from blueprint planning to implementation, greatly speeding up project progress.

“We expect data center storage to continue to grow at a CAGR of around 23% until 2030, and HDD and NAND vendors will benefit greatly from the continued surge in storage demand brought about by AI inference.” Bernstein's team of analysts wrote. “In the [hard disk drive] sector, a relatively stable oligopoly pattern should lead to steady profit and free cash flow growth, with Seagate, the leader in HAMR technology, in the best position. On the NAND side, SanDisk should be able to see significant profit growth as the 'new storage paradigm' is fully penetrated.”

Finally, the agency also published exclusive opinions and comments on the quantum computing revolution, saying that the established US tech giant IBM (IBM.US) may eventually become an industry leader in the quantum computing field. “Despite being viewed as a declining traditional player, IBM's huge investment in quantum computing innovation has begun to yield some returns and is driving the agency's performance back on a growth trajectory,” analysts wrote in a report.