The dot-com dream of the 1990s is thriving in today’s marketThe dot-com dream of the 1990s is thriving in today’s market

Companies known for their dot-com glory days have been on fire, and they’ve taken a run even higher lately.

Intel. Dell. Western Digital. Sandisk. Some of the old tech names that helped define the stock market mania of the 1990s are among the market’s top performers this year, blowing past decades-old market milestones**** thanks to the AI investment boom.

• Micron’s April gain of more than 50% was its best showing since February 2000, right before the dot-com market’s peak. Western Digital’s 60% run in April was its best performance since right after the dot-com market rolled over in January 2001.
• Dell, a ubiquitous brand of early internet-era PCs and laptops, is up more than 60% this year, including 27% in April. 
• A range of lesser-known internet-era darlings — Lam Research, Jabil Circuit, Ciena Corp., and ON Semiconductor — are also clustered near the top of the S&P 500’s list of best performers in 2026.

It wasn’t easy for these early internet icons to thrive two decades into the new millennium. 

• Sandisk, which is up nearly 300% in 2026, is now primarily a supplier of large storage systems for data centers, rather than a producer of memory chips consumers can use in digital cameras and music players. 
• Intel restructured its struggling manufacturing operations into a contract chipmaking unit in 2021, a decision that produced billions of dollars in losses, but left it with the valuable ability to ramp up some production to meet surging AI-related demand today. 
• Dell transformed itself via acquisitions, from a maker of affordable computers for companies and corporations into a data networking, software AI server giant.

Analysts now expect sales growth for business software giant Oracle — a 1990s beast — to eclipse the 37% and 35% high-water marks of 1996 and 1997, as a result of expectations about its AI data center business.

The Takeaway

The resurgence of such stocks is a fairly straightforward reflection of what’s going on in the US economy, as the rising tide of IT spending is lifting even companies that have struggled for decades to recapture their past glory. Tech investment as a share of GDP is reaching record levels, surpassing the 4.5% peak set in 2000. That means we’re in the biggest spending spree on computer equipment and software since America was first getting wired up for the web.