**The most surprising finding is that the AI boom is not where the biggest multiples are. Lasertec, a Japanese chip-equipment maker, rose about 443x, more than AMD or Broadcom. The scale is also odd at both ends, because the two giants that most people link to the AI story look ordinary by comparison or show data that needs checking.** **1. The biggest winners are not the obvious AI names** - NVIDIA is the top gainer, with its close rising from about $0.26 to $179, a max/min ratio of about 687x (step 3/4). - Second is Lasertec (6920.T), up roughly 443x from a minimum close of about ¥101 to about ¥44,520. - Lasertec beats Wolfspeed (about 355x), AMD (about 130x) and Broadcom (about 149x). - Other equipment and niche names also show huge multiples: HANMI Semiconductor (about 284x), Rorze (about 283x), Alchip (about 250x) and BrainChip (about 230x). - Nearly all of the top 25 gainers are small or mid-cap equipment, design-services or niche-IP firms. The "AI chip" headline names are only part of the picture. **2. The largest memory and foundry names lag badly** - Samsung's max/min close ratio is only about 5.6x (15,300 to 85,681 KRW), one of the smallest in the set. - Kokusai Electric, a recent listing, is 3.3x. - By this measure, Samsung's multiple is under 1% of NVIDIA's. **3. Caveats that may be inflating the extremes** - These ratios compare the lowest close to the highest close across 2012–2025. They are not a buy-and-hold return, and the low usually comes before the high. - Prices are in local currency and, judging from values like $0.26 for NVIDIA, appear split-adjusted. The tiny starting prices make the multiples look bigger. - SK Hynix's maximum close is exactly 300,000.0, a suspiciously round number that could be a data artifact. I have not verified it against an external source. - The data has 461 rows where the close falls outside the day's high–low range, 10 where the open does, 4,888 zero-volume rows, and 6,840 "flat" days. Some of those extreme values could come from dirty rows rather than real prices. - There are no duplicate stock/date keys, and no non-positive prices. If I had to pick one, it is the gap between NVIDIA's 687x and Samsung's 5.6x: the "semiconductor AI surge" is very concentrated, and some of the extreme multiples may be data artifacts rather than real gains.