Entegris led a broad-based AI-compute rally Thursday on an EUV patent settlement and a wafer-fab-equipment upgrade; only the optical names lagged.

Entegris (ENTG) rose 13.6% to $178.77, the cluster's standout, on a genuine company catalyst into a strong tape. A cross-licensing pact with JSR and Inpria ended a long-running EUV photoresist patent fight and opened deeper collaboration on next-node materials, and Mizuho lifted its target to $180 (Outperform) on a strengthening wafer-fab-equipment recovery. Entegris is the materials-and-filtration chokepoint: the high-purity chemistries, filters and substrates that every leading-edge fab consumes per wafer, so a WFE upcycle compounds through it. The settlement removes a legal overhang on the EUV resist supply chain — itself a chokepoint inside the chokepoint.

The session was broadly green, with money rotating out of defense and into chips on the interim US–Iran peace deal. The equipment and memory chokepoints led: KLAC +8.7%, Camtek (CAMT +9.6%), Micron (MU +8.7%, $1,133.99) on HBM, ASX (+8.3%) in packaging, with TSMC (+6.9%) and ASML (+3.3%) firmer. Intel (INTC +10.6%) extended its foundry-turnaround run on 18A-P risk production. Credo (CRDO +9.0%) and Marvell (+7.3%) carried the interconnect names. The power chokepoint that gates the buildout joined in — Talen (TLN +6.5%), GE Vernova (GEV +5.8%), Vistra (+3.1%) — as data-center megawatts stay the binding physical constraint behind the accelerators.

The only soft spots were optical and steel. Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) fell 3.3% to $161.85, the basket's worst, consolidating after a strong run on the optical-interconnect chokepoint (an insider 10b5-1 sale was disclosed Thursday); Lumentum (−2.3%) and Fabrinet (−1.8%) eased with it, and Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF −3.2%) lagged on the materials side. None of it reads as a thesis break — the transceiver demand tied to 800G/1.6T scaling is intact; this was a pause in a leadership group, not a reversal.

The print wave is near. Micron's FQ3 lands June 24 — the first full HBM4-ramp quarter and the memory-bandwidth chokepoint read. The Commerce Department's Section 232 data-center-semiconductor report to the President is due around July 1, a latent onshoring catalyst, and PJM's 2028/2029 capacity auction closes July 7 — a direct read on the data-center power premium. Then ASML's Q2 (July 15, the EUV-delivery pacing constraint), TSMC's Q2 (July 16), and Entegris' own Q2 on July 30, where it has guided sales of $815–845M.