There is a “crisis of confidence” gripping the technology sector, according to a Mizuho analyst. For that reason, investors may want to focus their attention on stocks backed by strong fundamentals.

What started as concerns about the threat of new artificial-intelligence features to traditional software companies ballooned into a selloff that hit the broader tech sector for most of the week. And while stocks bounced on Friday, Mizuho trading-desk analyst Jordan Klein noted that “former leaders” Nvidia NVDA and Broadcom AVGO had been stagnant recently.

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“Tech investors [are] frustrated, angry, worried” that institutional investors own a handful of the same names, that stock valuations are not sustainable and that any bit of news can take down the whole tech trade, he wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.

While some software players rank among the major technology companies that could grow sales the quickest in the coming years, many of the stocks that screen as having fast sales growth are in hardware-adjacent sectors. That helps to illustrate why there’s been a rotation out of software and into hardware plays this year.

To screen large-cap tech stocks, we began with the 70 companies in the S&P 500 information-technology sector XX:SP500.45 and added the 12 in the Nasdaq-100 Technology Sector Index XX:NDXT that are not in the S&P 500 SPX tech sector.

Among the 82 companies, the following 20 are expected to increase their sales the most this year, based on LSEG consensus analyst estimates and adjusted for calendar years for companies whose fiscal reporting periods don’t match the calendar.

Company

Projected 2026 sales growth

Projected 2-year sales CAGR through 2027

2026 price change through Feb. 5

Forward P/E

Forward P/E as of Dec. 31

Sandisk Corp. SNDK

130.9%

68.3%

143%

8.1

13.6

Micron Technology Inc. MU

65.5%

39.7%

34%

9.4

7.9

Palantir Technologies Inc. PLTR

57.6%

50.0%

-27%

91.4

173.1

Super Micro Computer Inc. SMCI

54.9%

34.9%

5%

11.3

11.6

Nvidia Corp. NVDA

54.8%

41.3%

-8%

21.1

24.5

Broadcom Inc. AVGO

49.6%

42.0%

-10%

26.8

31.9

AppLovin Corp. APP

37.0%

31.9%

-44%

23.7

45.5

Amphenol Corp. APH

35.6%

23.4%

-6%

28.1

31.7

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD

33.6%

37.0%

-10%

26.7

33.1

Teradyne Inc. TER

31.6%

25.2%

40%

40.3

36.7

Synopsys Inc. SNPS

31.1%

20.5%

-13%

26.9

31.7

DoorDash Inc. DASH

29.9%

24.3%

-19%

54.7

70.7

Western Digital Corp. WDC

29.0%

25.6%

51%

21.6

19.6

Seagate Technology Holdings PLC STX

27.7%

22.6%

47%

24.0

20.5

Fair Isaac Corp. FICO

25.4%

21.0%

-20%

28.8

38.9

Oracle Corp. ORCL

24.9%

33.4%

-30%

17.6

25.2

Meta Platforms Inc. META

24.3%

21.2%

2%

21.9

22.1

Microchip Technology Inc. MCHP

23.9%

21.1%

22%

28.0

28.8

Shopify Inc. SHOP

23.9%

22.9%

-31%

56.0

85.9

Marvell Technology Inc. MRVL

23.5%

25.5%

-13%

21.2

24.0

Source: LSEG

In comparison, the S&P 500 information-technology sector is expected to show a 17% weighted increase in sales per share this year, with a sales CAGR of 18.5% from 2025 through 2027.

The table includes a comparison of forward price-to-earnings ratios. Of course, the P/E ratios are down for many of the companies in part because of declining stock prices. But there are four companies whose forward P/E ratios have declined even as their share prices have risen. That’s because their consensus 12-month EPS estimates have risen more quickly. These companies are Sandisk SNDK, Super Micro Computer SMCI, Meta Platforms META and Microchip Technology MCHP.

Half of the companies trade at forward P/E valuations lower than the IT sector’s weighted P/E of 25.7.

Palantir Technologies PLTR, which saw its stock fall about 8% this week, has the third-highest projected sales growth of this group, and the highest among software names at 57.6%.

In its earnings report earlier this week, the company guided for 61% revenue growth in 2026 — ahead of the 40% Wall Street analysts were expecting. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives named Palantir as one of his “top tech names to own in 2026” in a Tuesday note, writing that the company could drive “unprecedented traction for its entire portfolio across the federal and commercial landscapes” for the foreseeable future.

See more: Palantir’s stock pops against a bleak software backdrop

Oracle ORCL also saw its stock get pummeled this week as investors worried both about the vulnerability of its enterprise software business and its increasing pile of debt from financing a major part of OpenAI’s data-center buildout. But the company still stands to grow sales at a 33% CAGR over two years as AI business piles in.

Perhaps less surprising is that memory makers Sandisk and Micron Technology MU have the highest estimated sales growth for 2026 in the group, at 130.9% and 65.5%, respectively.

Shortages in the memory market have driven memory and storage stocks higher, as companies have gained more pricing power both from the supply crunch and from offering higher-capacity products that cost more money. Memory and storage makers have also been reluctant to add capacity despite surging demand. They fear eventually having too much supply in what is a typically cyclical market.

Read on: Sandisk’s stock gets ‘one of the most delayed upgrades in history’ after blowout earnings

In its latest earnings report, Sandisk set fiscal third-quarter revenue guidance at between $4.4 billion and $4.8 billion — almost 60% higher at the midpoint than the analyst consensus on FactSet for $2.9 billion. And its third-quarter guidance on adjusted earnings per share was more than 150% higher than estimates.

Despite getting swept up in the fears rocking the tech trade this week, Sandisk’s stock is up 143% so far this year, and up more than 1,500% since it spun off from Western Digital WDC about a year ago. Western Digital and fellow storage leader Seagate Technology Holdings STX are also expected to see strong sales growth this year, at 29% and 27.7%, respectively.

Micron, too, has been riding the AI-driven highs among memory stocks, falling about 4% this week but rising 38% so far this year. The company has benefited from being one of three companies in the world that produce high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a type of memory that is crucial in AI chips, such as Nvidia’s graphics processing units, for supporting larger and more powerful AI models.

And read: Micron’s stock is surging as the company looks to cash in on a ‘desperate’ market

The chip maker announced late last month that it has plans to address another memory bottleneck with an advanced wafer-fabrication facility in Singapore for NAND manufacturing. Supply of NAND has become tight, as it is essential for inference, or the process of running AI models. Unlike dynamic random-access memory, which is stacked to make HBM, NAND is nonvolatile — meaning it can be used for storing data without needing power.

Meanwhile, Google’s announcement that it was raising its capital-expenditures forecast for the year to between $175 billion to $185 billion should be good news for chip makers Broadcom and Nvidia, as Google GOOGL GOOG works with Broadcom on its custom chips and uses Nvidia’s graphics processing units.

A lot of Google’s spending will go toward chips, Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, told MarketWatch. And Jefferies analyst Blayne Curtis said in a Thursday note that Google’s capex guidance “offers a significant vote of confidence for AI spend moving higher.”

Amazon’s AMZN $200 billion capex forecast also bodes well for Nvidia. Sales growth for Nvidia is projected to be 54.8% in 2026, while Broadcom is expected to see 49.6% sales growth.

Don’t miss: Nvidia and Oracle are flashing similar warning signs about the AI trade

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