Intel leads chips mostly higher in holiday shortened week

Semiconductor stocks were mostly higher on Monday, led by gains in Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), as traders looked to add to profits in a holiday-shortened week.

Intel shares rose more than 3% after it was reported that the Biden Administration is getting close to doling out the grant from the U.S. CHIPs Act to the Pat Gelsinger-led semiconductor company. The amount is likely to be revised down to $8B from the initially proposed $8.5B, but the act of the company receiving the funds is giving investors a bit of relief.

Intel competitors AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) were mixed, as AMD gained 2% after Bernstein highlighted some of the gains the Dr. Lisa Su-led company made in the third-quarter against Intel. Conversely, Nvidia slipped almost 3% even as the company unveiled a new artificial intelligence model catered towards content creators in the music and audio spaces.

Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) rose nearly 3% after UBS initiated coverage on the British chip design firm with a Buy rating and $160 price target, citing continued momentum in the AI space. Analysts led by Timothy Arcuri said AI is driving positive growth vectors across all of Arm’s key markets, with the data center particularly fertile ground as the customer base for its IP licenses expands and cloud customers push for more power optimized CPU architectures (a core strength of Arm’s offering).

Also seeing gains were several companies that license Arm’s intellectual property, including Qualcomm (QCOM) and Broadcom (AVGO), both of which were up 0.5% or more.

Micron (MU), Texas Instruments (TXN), On Semiconductor (ON), Analog Devices (ADI), Microchip Technology (MCHP) also saw strong gains in midday trading.