Don't Overlook These 2 AI-Driven Tech Stocks After Earnings: CIEN, NTAP

CIEN raised fiscal 2026 revenue guidance to $6.42 billion, representing 35% growth, after cloud provider revenue for its optical networking equipment surged 82% year-over-year. The company reported strong earnings that prompted the guidance increase, driven by demand for AI infrastructure buildout.

NTAP posted record quarterly results with revenue climbing 30% year-over-year to $2.02 billion. Management significantly raised fiscal 2027 guidance to a range of $7.98 billion to $8.23 billion, also citing accelerating AI infrastructure spending. The storage and data management provider capitalized on enterprise demand for systems capable of handling AI workloads.

Both companies now carry Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) ratings following their earnings releases. The optical networking and storage sectors are benefiting directly from hyperscaler and cloud provider investments in data center capacity needed to support AI model training and inference.