Micron And Dell Are Up 260%: These 5 Small Caps Nearly Doubled That

The defining trade of 2026 has a familiar face. Memory chips and AI servers turned two of the market’s largest hardware names into the year’s marquee winners, and most investors know exactly who they are.

Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) and Dell Technologies Inc. (NYSE:DELL) have each climbed roughly 260% in 2026, the second- and third-best performers in the S&P 500 behind SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ:SNDK). Both have more than tripled.

Yet, even bigger returns went somewhere else.

Beneath the household tickers, a cluster of Russell 2000 names few investors can place has each run more than 400% this year.

Four of them sell the components that make the AI buildout physically possible. One has nothing to do with AI at all.

What Are Investors Actually Buying In The AI Race?

The trade underneath all of it is simple to state. Artificial intelligence systems need enormous amounts of memory to hold the data they process, and supply has not kept up.

Micron makes that memory. Its most valuable product, high-bandwidth memory, or HBM — the stacked chips that sit beside the graphics processors inside an AI server — is sold out through 2026 under binding contracts. That is rare for an industry that has spent decades lurching between glut and shortage.

Dell builds the servers those chips go into. In its first quarter of fiscal 2027, reported in late May, AI server revenue jumped 757% from a year earlier to $16.1 billion, and the company exited the period with a record $51.3 billion in AI orders it had not yet filled.

If Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) is selling the pickaxes in this gold rush, Micron and Dell are selling the parts that go inside the pickaxes.

Russell 2000’s Best Performing Stocks In 2026

Five Russell 2000 components have each rallied more than 400% in 2026, outpacing Micron and Dell by a wide margin.

Three are direct plays on the AI supply chain. The other two are different stories entirely.

Applied Optoelectronics, Inc., up about 473% this year, makes the optical components that move data between AI servers at high speed.

In the first quarter, revenue rose 51% to $151.14 million as datacenter sales more than doubled, and the company completed its first volume shipment of 800-gigabit products to a large hyperscale customer.

Aehr Test Systems, Inc., up about 436%, makes the equipment that tests and burns in semiconductors before they ship.

Its catalyst was a single order — a record $41 million follow-on contract from a hyperscale AI customer, part of more than $92 million added to its backlog in the back half of fiscal 2026.

MaxLinear, Inc., up about 398%, designs networking chips for data centers. First-quarter revenue rose 43% to $137.2 million, and the company swung to a profit as its infrastructure business — largely AI optical connectivity — grew 136% from a year earlier to become its largest segment.

Rackspace Technology, Inc. is not a chip story. It is a debt-laden cloud-services company that traded below $1 earlier this year and has since climbed more than 400% on a single piece of news.

In May, Rackspace signed a partnership with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) to build a managed AI cloud aimed at regulated customers in finance, healthcare and government. First-quarter revenue beat, though the company still lost money and still carries more than $3 billion in long-term debt against roughly $94 million in cash.

agilon health, inc., up about 404%, has nothing to do with AI. The company sells primary care for seniors.

Its rally is a pure earnings recovery. In the first quarter, agilon reported earnings of $1.80 per share against expectations near $0.90, raised its full-year 2026 guidance and pointed to favorable Medicare Advantage rates now locked in for 2026 and 2027.

Even after quadrupling, the stock trades far below the $111.50 it touched in May 2025. This is a deeply depressed name climbing off the floor, not a new high-flyer.

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