Agentic AI reshapes market valuations as memory and data stocks surge

Agentic artificial intelligence is fundamentally altering financial market dynamics, driving significant upward price movements in technology equities positioned to support autonomous workloads. Unlike the generative AI wave that preceded it, which relied on human-initiated prompts, agentic AI enables systems to reason through multi-step tasks and execute actions independently. This shift from AI as a passive tool to an active actor has prompted investors to reposition capital towards companies providing essential memory infrastructure, platform orchestration, and enterprise data management.

SanDisk Corporation has emerged as a primary beneficiary of this structural shift, with shares rising more than 4,200 per cent over the past year. The market is pricing in a multi-year shortage of memory infrastructure required to retain the vast context that agentic workloads demand. While generative AI processes queries on an ad hoc basis, agentic systems require continuous, active memory retention, turning storage capacity into a critical commodity within the technology supply chain.

Platform orchestration and data management are also seeing rapid revaluation. ServiceNow Inc has increased more than 35 per cent since the start of May, as the market recognises its role as a governance layer for deploying agents across business workflows. This momentum is supported by a deepening partnership with Anthropic’s Claude, reinforcing ServiceNow’s position as a foundational infrastructure stock. Similarly, Snowflake Inc surged more than 40 per cent in a few days following its earnings report, as investors acknowledged the company’s critical function in managing enterprise data at scale for agentic applications.

Apple Inc is experiencing its strongest run in months, driven by analyst arguments that its ecosystem controls user identity, payments, and application access. Bank of America has highlighted that in an agentic world, value accrues to entities that mediate these interactions at scale. This positioning allows Apple to capture value from autonomous transactions in a manner that pure AI laboratories cannot replicate, leading to a steady repricing of the stock.

The broader market reaction underscores a divergence in software valuations. While agentic-related stocks soar, Salesforce experienced a sell-off on earnings day despite repurchasing $27 billion in stock, highlighting persistent concerns regarding slowing revenue growth for traditional software firms. Conversely, Amazon.com Inc reported $213.4 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, beating expectations and driving a 31.9 per cent share price increase in the subsequent month. The current trend suggests that capital is increasingly favouring companies directly enabling the agentic ecosystem over those with legacy software models.