Columbia Seligman Semiconductor and Technology ETF

SEMI

Market cap $36.8M

Several years ago, semiconductor ETFs were often viewed as a Nvidia (NVDA) story. With Nvidia driving much of the group's growth and performance, some investors questioned the need for broader exposure.

Semiconductors are essential to modern tech, but investing requires understanding their cyclical, capital-intensive, and segmented industry structure. Long-term outperformance comes from picking top-quartile companies with high ROE, proprietary tech, and supply chain control—most others underperform. Industry cycles are inevitable, but secular demand from AI, data centers, EVs, and automation keeps raising the baseline for growth.

NVDA reclaims the top spot with a $3.45T valuation, and ETFs with heavy exposure to the stock offer investors a way to ride the AI wave.

The emergence of China-based AI startup DeepSeek triggers a trillion-dollar sell-off in U.S. and European technology stocks.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly boosted the stock performance of Palantir Technologies Inc. PLTR this year (up 386.7% YTD). The stock even outperformed the gem of AI — NVIDIA Corporation NVDA (up about 190% YTD) — in 2024.

Uncertainty remains the only certainty as 2025 approaches in the form of Trump and Fed policies.

Nvidia (NVDA) has been one of the most interesting stocks of the year. The company isn't new to disruptive technology and has been known for its innovations in computer graphics and gaming years before it became a household name.

Driven by demand from cloud computing and AI, semiconductor sales have skyrocketed in recent months as pressure due to supply chain concerns and inflation has eased. The specialized chips that power these popular technologies are in such high demand that makers of these products now represent three of the 10 largest companies in the world by market capitalization—NVIDIA Corp., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.

The past week saw the debut of 13 new ETFs on U.S. markets as well as a host of material changes to existing funds. Among the firms launching ETFs were Harbor Capital, YieldMax, ALPS, and T.

Warren Buffett expressed his fascination with artificial intelligence (AI) in an interview with CNBC in April 2023. Buffett has invested $159 billion in eight tech stocks, per a Motley Fool article, as quoted on Yahoo Finance.