Morgan Stanley said increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence could boost demand for central processing units (CPUs), reshape data center construction and expand investment beyond the graphics chips that have dominated the AI boom so far.
"As AI transitions from generation to autonomous action, computing bottlenecks are shifting to CPU and memory, driving a step change in general-purpose computing intensity," Morgan Stanley said in a note on Sunday, adding that demand for graphics processing units (GPUs) remains strong.
Morgan Stanley estimates that agent AI will add $32.5 billion to $60 billion to the data center CPU market, which already exceeds $100 billion, by 2030.
Agent AI refers to systems that are able to plan tasks and take actions on their own, rather than simply responding to prompts.
Morgan Stanley says the next wave of agent AI will be driven more by coordination than just raw computing power.
Central processing units increasingly serve as the control layer for artificial intelligence systems that manage multi-step tasks.
Memory demand will rise dramatically, extending AI spending beyond GPUs to chipmakers, memory suppliers and manufacturing.
The brokerage added that companies in supply-constrained parts of the ecosystem are likely to gain more pricing power.
Morgan Stanley believes that the following companies are potential beneficiaries: in the field of CPU and accelerator, Nvidia, AMD, Intel and Arm; in the field of memory, Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix; in the field of chip manufacturing and equipment, TSMC and ASML.