Retail investors in the UAE moved into the companies building the physical backbone of artificial intelligence during the third quarter of 2026, while cutting their exposure to several software businesses, according to platform data from trading and investing app etoro.
The figures compare holdings among etoro’s funded UAE users on the last day of the second quarter with the last day of the third. Oracle led the list of risers, with the number of UAE users holding the stock up 86 per cent quarter on quarter. Grab Holdings followed with an 83 per cent rise, ahead of memory and storage maker Sandisk at 56 per cent.
Chip and memory names featured further down the risers list too. Broadcom ranked seventh with a 22 per cent increase and Micron Technology ninth with 20 per cent. Space companies Rocket Lab and SpaceX took fifth and sixth place, while Nike, Trade Desk and Uber completed the top ten.
Josh Gilbert, lead analyst, Asia Pacific and Middle East at etoro, said: “UAE investors are following the AI money to where it’s actually being spent, and Oracle has become one of the clearest ways to own that build-out.”
Oracle reported more than USD 30 billion in additional AI cloud contracts during its fiscal first quarter, announced in September. Gilbert pointed to Broadcom, Sandisk and Micron as evidence that investors in the region are looking beyond the best known AI names to the suppliers of the chips, memory and storage that AI workloads depend on.
Software loses ground
At the other end of the table, customer experience software company NiCE saw the largest fall, with holders down 84 per cent. Cosmetics brand e.l.f. Beauty matched that decline, and website builder Wix.com fell 77 per cent. Accenture, Salesforce and Duolingo were also among the ten biggest fallers.
“Half of the UAE’s biggest fallers sell something AI is quickly learning to do on its own, from building a website with Wix to learning a language with Duolingo, and investors in the region have stopped giving those businesses the benefit of the doubt,” Gilbert said. In his view, companies such as Salesforce, NiCE and Accenture will need to show AI as a genuine source of new revenue in their results before sentiment changes.
Consumer stocks moved in both directions. Nike rose to fourth among the risers after its shares fell to a 12-year low, while e.l.f. Beauty sat second among the fallers, which Gilbert read as investors judging individual businesses rather than the sector as a whole.
Nvidia keeps top spot
Nvidia remained the most widely held stock among etoro users in the UAE. Amazon climbed from third to second and Tesla from fourth to third, while Microsoft slipped from second to fourth. Apple, Meta and Alphabet held fifth, sixth and seventh, Alibaba moved up to eighth in place of Strategy Inc, and Nio stayed tenth.
The data covers funded accounts of etoro users in the UAE and was accurate after market close on 30 September 2026. Past performance is not an indication of future results.
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