Red-Hot Chip Stocks Are Lifting Tech ETFs. One ETF Has Doubled Since It Launched Last Month.

Some exchange-traded funds offer the safety of diversification at the expense of eye-popping returns. This year, returns are the story, especially at funds that hold big slugs of red-hot chip shares.

A handful of tech ETFs—especially those holding semiconductor stocks—are outperforming the market in dramatic fashion in 2026. The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM), which launched in April, leads the pack with a 99% return as of Monday. As its name suggests, the fund is tied to one of Wall Street’s favorite themes of late: the memory shortage caused by booming AI data center demand. DRAM offers exposure to “a precise basket of global memory chip companies” benefiting from “the multi-decade buildout of AI infrastructure,” according to Roundhill. (The S&P 500, for comparison, is up less than 10% this year.)

The vast majority of semiconductor ETFs are also trouncing the market. The Invesco Semiconductors ETF (PSI) has risen about 75% this year. The fund tracks a proprietary index of 30 semiconductor stocks, making it more diverse than some of its peers, though huge gains in a single stock have recently increased the fund’s concentration risk; shares of MaxLinear (MXL), a chip designer with a fast-growing data center business, is up more than 300% in the past month. As a result, the $8 billion company accounts for 10% of PSI, more than twice the weight of Nvidia (NVDA), a $5 trillion juggernaut. (Their weights may be adjusted during the index’s quarterly rebalancing at the end of the month.)

DRAM’s concentration—what Roundhill calls its “precise basket”—is one of the keys to its success. The ETF is composed of only nine stocks, and its top three holdings—Micron (MU), SK Hynix, and Samsung—account for nearly three-quarters of the fund. Those holdings have performed exceptionally well this year. Micron is up more than 175%, while SK Hynix and Samsung have risen about 190% and 140%, respectively. Smaller components have performed even better. Shares of SanDisk (SNDK), about 6% of the fund, are up more than 400% in 2026. 

“Investors are waking up to the fact that the biggest bottleneck in the AI buildout is actually memory chips,” Roundhill CEO Dave Mazza said on CNBC Tuesday. “There’s actually an incredible amount of supply-and-demand imbalance with memory, which is one of the reasons the stocks have been performing so well.”

Other chip funds have been boosted by Intel (INTC), the S&P 500’s best-performing stock over the past month. Shares of the chipmaker last month closed at their first record high since 2000 after the company blew past earnings expectations due to “unprecedented demand” from the AI boom. Intel is the top holding in the First Trust Nasdaq Semiconductor Index (FTXL), up 70% this year, and the Xtrackers Semiconductor Select Equity ETF (CHPS), up about 65%. 

Chip stocks are increasingly in the drivers seat of tech funds that ostensibly target broader themes. Micron, SK Hynix, and Intel account for more than a quarter of the Invesco AI and Next Gen Software ETF (IGPT), an index of “companies with significant exposure to technologies or products that contribute to future software development.”

The fund has long held semiconductor stocks, but their weight in the index ballooned over the past year as chip stocks rallied and software stocks slumped amid mounting uncertainty about AI’s impact on the industry. Between early 2025 and 2026, software’s share of the index declined from 21% to 11%, while semiconductors’ share increased from 31.5% to 45%.

This article was first published on May 11, 2026. It was updated to add comment from Mazza and to reflect the latest market data.