Tech Stars From the 90s Reborn: Nokia, Dell, Cisco Surge on AI

They were all stars of the dot-com era before fading into the background as the bubble burst and a new generation of tech darlings rose to the forefront. But Dell Technologies Inc., Nokia Oyj and Lenovo Group Ltd. are back with a vengeance thanks to the unrelenting artificial intelligence spending boom. A rush to build out AI infrastructure has led to soaring demand for everything from computer servers to storage components, networking gear and even legacy chips. That’s resulted in a frenetic rally in stocks around the world with any sort of exposure to those areas. The latest surge has swept up iconic tech names from the 1990s, including many of the so-called “Four Horsemen” — a group considered the equivalent of the Magnificent Seven cohort during that era. In addition to Dell, Nokia and Lenovo, high fliers from the dot-com days that have caught fire again this year include Micron Technology Inc., Intel Corp., Texas Instruments Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. In total, the seven stocks have soared an average of 158% in 2026, adding a combined $1.7 trillion in market value. “About six months ago we started realizing that the AI infrastructure buildout is now really broadening out, and there’s a massive under-supply in especially the boring hardware space where capacity addition has been very limited over the last few years,” said Yan Taw Boon, a portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman. “But demand is skyrocketing — everything from the boring CPUs to networking to passive components, to storage and memory.” From clunky mobile phone makers to a reinvented calculator chip producer, here are some of the retro tech stocks that are staging a roaring comeback:

Dell

Shares of Dell soared 33% on Friday, their biggest one-day gain ever, after the hardware maker — best known for its personal computer business — reported earnings that showed surging demand for its AI servers. The rally may harken back to Dell’s heyday when the stock soared more than 200% for three consecutive years in the late 1990s. But after the company lost more than 80% of its value in the wake of the dot-com bust, it was taken private in 2013. Dell returned to public markets in late 2018 and is now worth $125 billion more than its peak valuation of $148 billion in March 2000. The blowout earnings print is evidence that Dell is “the latest perceived dinosaur tech to rediscover a new lease of life as an AI powerhouse,” said Emmanuel Valavanis of Forte Securities.

Lenovo

Lenovo Group Ltd. announced itself on the global stage with the acquisition of International Business Machines Corp.’s personal computing division in 2005, gaining rights to the iconic ThinkPad line of business notebooks, and providing a foundation to eventually becoming the largest PC maker in the world. While the PC industry has been in secular decline for years, Lenovo’s push into AI products and services has helped the Chinese computer hardware company generate revenue growth of 20% over the last year, with nearly 40% of its total sales now coming from those businesses. Lenovo shares gained 105% in May to hit a record high and mint their best month in more than a quarter-century. Its shares are the top performer on Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index this year, up 159%, delivering investors more than three times the return of the next best stock.

Nokia

Nokia suffered back-to-back setbacks in the 2000s: first a telecommunication boom that turned into a bust, and then its handset business was disrupted by the rise of smartphones. From a peak market value of €300 billion ($349 billion), the stock fell as much as 98% through 2012. After selling its mobile phone business to Microsoft in 2014, Nokia rebuilt itself around the less glamorous business of telecommunications networking gear. Its latest revival has been helped by its 2025 purchase of Infinera, a US optical-networking specialist, just as AI data centers were boosting demand for faster links between computing clusters. Shares of the Finnish company have surged more than 124% this year, making it the fourth-best performer in the Stoxx Europe 600. Still, the stock has yet to retest its highs of the dot-com era and remains nearly 80% below its record close.

Cisco Systems

Few companies embody the renaissance in legacy tech stocks more than Cisco, the maker of networking equipment that was the face of the dot-com bubble and briefly the world’s most valuable company in 2000. The company has reinvented itself from legacy networking to AI infrastructure, and its success in the AI era was seen in results released earlier this month, which featured a robust revenue forecast for its fiscal fourth quarter and a plan to cut jobs as it pivots to focus on AI. The results were the latest indication that growth trends are on the upswing, adding to an inflection in AI-related demand last year that helped the stock return to record levels, finally topping its March 2000 peak. Shares have gained 56% in 2026 and are on track to outperform the Nasdaq 100 Index by their widest annual margin since 2006.

Intel

Intel was all but left for dead by investors less than two years ago, as years of manufacturing issues made its one-time semiconductor industry leadership a distant memory. The road back to prominence has been volatile, with four different chief executive officers over the last decade. Its current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, was lauded by Wall Street after being appointed to the job last year only to have President Trump call for his resignation months later, before he swiftly reversed course and ultimately secured a US government stake in the company. Nvidia followed with a $5 billion investment and the shares popped again in March when the company announced that its new Xeon chips are being used in some Nvidia systems. The stock then soared to a record last month after giving a sales forecast that blew away Wall Street’s expectations. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Intel had reached a preliminary agreement with Apple to manufacture some of the chips in its devices, news seen as validation that its chip foundry efforts are bearing fruit. Shares are up 211% this year, set for their best performance on record.

Texas Instruments

The Dallas, Texas-based firm was a dominant provider in the 1990s of chips that convert real-world signals to 0s and 1s, a crucial component for telecommunication equipment and mobile phones. But demand slid as telecommunication buildouts slowed, with the stock falling more than 85% from peak to trough between 2000 and 2002. After a sluggish start to the ChatGPT era, as it dealt with wavering demand from its clients in the automotive and industrial markets, the company’s sales have picked up steam as more of its chips are required to support AI servers that need more power density. Its data center unit now generates more than $1 billion a year in sales, a total that grew more than 60% in 2025. Texas Instrument shares have soared 76% this year and are on track for their best annual performance since 2003.

Micron

Micron became a member of the trillion dollar market capitalization club this month, nearly 50 years after the company was founded in the basement of a Boise, Idaho, dental office. The memory chip marker saw its shares boom in the late 1990s as it became one the biggest memory producers in the world after buying Texas Instruments’ memory business. From the stock’s peak in July 2000 to its trough in November 2008, it lost more than 98% of its value. Its shares didn’t make a fresh record high again until early 2022. But over the last year the stock has become the poster-child for downstream beneficiaries of the AI spending boom. As one of the leading makers of high-bandwidth memory, it’s seen an explosion of demand for its chips that has far outpaced supplies. Its shares have surged more than 903% in the span of 12 months and set a record for the fastest from a $500 billion valuation to $1 trillion, making the jump in just 48 trading days.