This AI Stock Is Quietly Gaining Ground—Time to Buy Before It Explodes?

Silent surge: AI stock defies market gravity while analysts nap at their terminals.

The Stealth Ascent

No fanfare, no hype—just relentless upward momentum. This AI play keeps climbing when nobody's watching, stacking gains while flashier names grab headlines.

Wall Street's Blind Spot

Traditional metrics miss the story completely. Fundamentals look solid but the real action happens in algorithmic trading patterns and institutional accumulation.

Buy Signal or Trap?

Timing matters more than the asset itself. Early movers already pocketed serious returns—latecomers risk buying the top. Classic finance pros still can't tell machine learning from a vending machine.

Bottom line: Sometimes the quietest moves pack the loudest punch. But remember—if it sounds too good to be true in markets, it usually is.

Image source: Getty Images.

The foundry leader

TSMC has become the dominant foundry in the world, by far. has been trying to build a competitive foundry business for years, but it's still losing money and has struggled with production yields.has also struggled with yields. This is whyrecently moved its Tensor G5 smartphone chip production over to TSMC. Neither competitor is a competitive threat at this point.

TSMC, meanwhile, is the only foundry that has shown it can reliably shrink node sizes and deliver strong yields at scale. Smaller nodes mean more transistors can fit on a chip, making them faster and more efficient. Advanced chips use small nodes, and these chips are where TSMC shines. Chips built on 7nm or smaller nodes make up nearly three-quarters of its revenue, with 3nm alone now about a quarter. The company is already preparing to MOVE into 2nm, which shows how far ahead it is.

With rivals struggling to keep up, every major AI chip designer has no choice but to rely on TSM. That puts it in an enviable position, because it doesn't have to chase customers; customers come to it hoping to grab some capacity.

Pricing power

TSMC's position in the market has also given it strong pricing power. The company has consistently been able to raise prices for its services, and according to reports, it will increase prices next year by 10%. That will be a nice revenue growth driver, but honestly, it could likely have raised its prices even more. However, the company does view itself as a partner with its customers.

This has also helped TSMC boost its gross margins over the years. Last year, its gross margin came in at a solid 56.1%, which was a big jump from the 46.4% it posted in 2019. While there will be margin fluctuations as it builds new fabs (manufacturing facilities) outside of Taiwan and introduces new nodes, this is just a better business overall than it was before the pandemic.

Big opportunities ahead

AI chips are going to be the main growth driver for TSMC for years to come. Nvidia has predicted the market for AI infrastructure will rise to between $3 trillion to $4 trillion in the next five years. TSMC management, meanwhile, has forecast that AI chip demand will grow at a more than 40% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2028. Those are just some mind-blowing numbers.

However, AI chips are not TSMC's only big opportunity on the horizon. Autonomous driving is another area that could require an enormous amount of computing power. If robotaxis are really going to fill city streets in the next decade, each of them will need multiple advanced chips to operate safely. That's another market where TSMC is positioned right in the middle to benefit.

Beyond AI and autonomous vehicles, the company is also set to benefit from anything that needs advanced chips. This could be robotics, such as's Optimus, or quantum computing. Wherever technology is headed, though, there likely is going to be a need for powerful chips behind it. And of course, that benefits TSMC.

A quiet winner

As a huge AI beneficiary, TSMC has been a quiet winner. It is growing quickly, with revenue soaring 44% year over year last quarter, but it still only trades at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just 21 times 2026 analyst estimates.

Huang is probably right. Anybody buying TSMC today may look back a few years from now and be very glad they did.