Key Highlights

  • Nebius Group delivered the most dramatic figures in the group, with second-quarter Revenue up 454% year over year to $582.3 million.
  • Hut 8's second-quarter revenue rose 81.4% to $74.9 million, though the company swung to a $177.1 million net loss.
  • Bandwidth grew second-quarter revenue 22% to $220 million in cloud communications infrastructure.
  • Fastly transferred its stock listing from the NYSE to the Nasdaq Global Select Market, effective November 26, 2025.

The Nasdaq Composite that entered mid-September 2026 is not a monolith of megacap chips and platforms. Underneath the headline names sits a wide middle tier of software and technology-services companies, each exposed to the same Demand story, artificial intelligence, connectivity and the infrastructure beneath both, in strikingly different ways.

Fastly (NASDAQ:FSLY), Bandwidth (NASDAQ:BAND), Viavi Solutions (NASDAQ:VIAV), Hut 8 (NASDAQ:HUT) and Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS) span edge delivery and security, cloud communications, network and optical test, Bitcoin Mining pivoting to AI compute, and pure-play AI cloud. Grouping them illustrates how the "AI trade" fans out across the market rather than any claim they move together. What they share is a September when growth has, on the reported numbers, been real, and when the Cost of Capital is suddenly back in question.

A Sector Riding AI Demand Into a Higher-Rate Test

The macro backdrop matters more than usual here. Per J.P. Morgan Wealth Management commentary published 5 August 2026, the federal funds rate stood at 3.50%-3.75% after the July FOMC, and futures markets implied roughly a 65% probability of a 25-basis-point hike in September, a shift driven by energy shocks tied to the Iran conflict, with oil near $80 a barrel. Kevin Warsh chairs the Fed, and July's 9-3 hold, the same note argued, "lowered the bar" for a September move. The FOMC meets 15-16 September.

That framing is important because the companies below are, to varying degrees, long-duration bets. Higher-for-longer rates tend to compress valuations most for the least-profitable, most capital-hungry growth names, and reward those already converting revenue into cash. Several of these five sit on each side of that line.

Demand, meanwhile, has kept building. Nasdaq Composite record highs earlier in 2026 were widely attributed to AI infrastructure momentum, and each of the five reported double- or triple-digit revenue growth in their most recent quarters. The open question for September is whether that operating strength can outrun a repricing of risk.

Fastly (NASDAQ:FSLY): Edge Delivery and Security Find a Profit Rhythm

Fastly, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSLY) is worth pausing on for a structural reason: it transferred its listing to the Nasdaq Global Select Market from the NYSE, a move the company announced on 26 November 2025. So its inclusion under a Nasdaq banner is now correct, a detail the tickers themselves don't always make obvious.

On the numbers, Fastly reported (8-K filed 5 August 2026) record second-quarter 2026 revenue of $183.3 million, up 23% year over year, with security revenue up 43%. It posted a GAAP net loss of $15.6 million, or $0.10 per share, but non-GAAP Net Income of $26.2 million, diluted EPS of $0.15, and non-GAAP Operating Income of $27.0 million. Full-year 2026 guidance was set at $732.0–$746.0 million in revenue and $0.50–$0.54 non-GAAP EPS.

The story is a content-delivery and edge-security Business finally showing Operating Leverage after years of investment, with security and packaged products diversifying away from volatile traffic-based revenue. The swing Factor is whether Fastly can keep expanding non-GAAP margins while competing against larger edge and cloud platforms, something the guidance implies but does not guarantee.

Bandwidth (NASDAQ:BAND): CPaaS Scale Turns Toward Durable Profitability

Bandwidth Inc. (NASDAQ:BAND) sits in cloud communications, or CPaaS, the programmable voice, messaging and emergency-services plumbing behind other companies' apps. On 29 July 2026 it reported (per its PRNewswire release) second-quarter 2026 revenue of $220 million, up 22% year over year, with net income of $2.387 million against a $4.931 million loss a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA was $28 million, up 27%, at what the company called a record 18% margin.

Management raised full-year 2026 guidance to $900–$910 million in revenue, $123–$125 million adjusted EBITDA and $1.71–$1.79 non-GAAP EPS, with third-quarter revenue guided to $231–$235 million.

Bandwidth's pitch is scale plus improving unit economics: it owns much of its network, which can support margins as messaging and voice volumes grow, including AI-driven use cases like conversational agents that lean on programmable communications. The risks are the usual CPaaS ones, pass-through messaging costs, concentration among large customers, and pricing pressure, so the durability of that 18% margin, hedged as it must be, is the number to track through the back half of the year.

Viavi Solutions (NASDAQ:VIAV): Network and Optical Test Rides the Build-Out

VIAVI Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAV) makes the test, monitoring and optical instruments that networks and data-centre builders depend on, a quieter way to sell into the same AI and connectivity boom. Its fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2026 results, announced 5 August 2026, were strong.

For fiscal Q4 (ended 27 June 2026), net revenue was $443.1 million, up 52.5% year over year, with GAAP diluted EPS of $0.13 and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.34. Its Network and Service Enablement segment jumped 69.2% to $353.9 million, while Optical Security and Performance Products rose 9.6% to $89.2 million. For the full fiscal year, revenue reached $1.518 billion, up 40%, with non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.00 (up 112.8%) even as GAAP EPS was a $0.13 loss. Guidance for fiscal Q1 2027 was $450–$460 million in revenue and $0.40–$0.42 non-GAAP EPS.

The NSE surge reflects demand for testing data-centre interconnects and next-generation wireless. The caution is cyclicality: test-and-measurement spending tracks carrier and hyperscaler capital budgets, which can turn quickly if the build-out pauses.

Hut 8 (NASDAQ:HUT): A Bitcoin Miner Rebuilt as an AI Data-Centre Landlord

Hut 8 Corp. (NASDAQ: HUT; also TSX: HUT) is the most transformed name here, and the most volatile. Reported 4 August 2026, its second-quarter 2026 revenue was $74.9 million, up 81.4% from $41.3 million, with adjusted EBITDA of $10.4 million. But it swung to a net loss of $177.1 million from a $137.5 million profit a year earlier, a reminder that mark-to-market accounting on bitcoin and heavy Investment can dominate reported earnings.

The pivot dwarfs the mining business. Hut 8 reported roughly $8.1 billion in cash and bitcoin holdings as of 30 June 2026, and an AI data-centre pipeline of 949 MW contracted capacity with an expected aggregate base-term value of about $26.6 billion and average annual net operating income above $1.75 billion, backed by $7.5 billion of secured investment-grade financing. Its Beacon Point campus alone carries a $19.6 billion base-term value.

Hut 8 is repositioning as an AI infrastructure landlord, its bitcoin Balance Sheet funding gigawatt ambitions. Execution risk, financing and bitcoin-price swings make this the highest-variance profile of the five, the loss underlines that.

Nebius Group (NASDAQ:NBIS): Hypergrowth AI Cloud, Meet the Cost of Capital

Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ:NBIS), a Netherlands-domiciled AI cloud provider, delivered the most dramatic figures. On 12 August 2026 it reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $582.3 million, up 454% year over year and ahead of roughly $572.75 million consensus, with adjusted EBITDA of $236.2 million versus a $21 million loss a year earlier. It still posted a GAAP net loss of $190.4 million and an adjusted loss of $0.12 per share, with AI cloud roughly 98% of revenue and four deals each above $1 billion in total contract value.

Management reaffirmed 2026 revenue guidance of $3.0–$3.4 billion and an end-of-2026 annualized run-rate revenue (ARR) target of $7–$9 billion, after 2025 ARR exceeded $1.2 billion.

Nebius is a near-pure play on renting AI compute at scale, and the contract wins suggest genuine demand. This is where September's rate question bites hardest: funding gigawatts of GPUs is capital-intensive and cash-consumptive, so a higher cost of capital would test the model most directly here. The growth is real; the financing math is the open variable.

What Investors Should Watch Into Late September

The near-term swing factor is shared: the 15-16 September FOMC decision. A hike, or hawkish guidance under Chair Warsh, would, as analysis, pressure the longest-duration and least-profitable names, Nebius and Hut 8 most acutely, Fastly and Bandwidth less so given their improving cash generation, and Viavi via customer capex sensitivity.

Company-specific watch items: for Fastly, whether security keeps outpacing network services; for Bandwidth, the durability of that record adjusted-EBITDA margin; for Viavi, whether NSE strength persists or proves a capex-cycle peak; for Hut 8, financing and construction milestones on its contracted campuses plus bitcoin's price path; and for Nebius, progress toward the $7–$9 billion ARR target against its cash burn. None of these outcomes is assured, and readers should treat all forward statements as hedged.

Quiet Names Building Real Momentum

Weighing them together, these five Nasdaq names are a cross-section, not a portfolio. On reported figures, each showed real growth in its latest quarter, and several, Fastly, Bandwidth and Viavi on a non-GAAP basis, showed profitability improving alongside it. Hut 8 and Nebius offer the highest growth and the highest variance, with balance sheets and financing plans that a higher-rate September could scrutinize hard.

The through-line for the month is tension: durable AI-and-connectivity demand on one side, a Fed that may still be tightening on the other. How that resolves after 16 September will shape whether this slice of the technology-services market keeps leading the Composite or gives some of 2026's gains back.