Materials Stocks Break Out as Old Economy Meets the Future

DENVER, Jan. 22, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Materials are rarely the flashiest corner of the market, but they are making plenty of noise. Vulcan Materials (NYSE:VMC) and Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT) both pushed to fresh all-time highs.

These records arrive at a time when construction, semiconductors, infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing are all accelerating simultaneously, fueled by AI data-center buildouts, reshoring, energy transition, and defense modernization, underscoring how demand for everything from aggregates to advanced manufacturing tools is accelerating as infrastructure spending, AI, and next-generation technologies converge.

What's especially notable is how broad the rally has become. Traditional building materials, semiconductor equipment, precious metals, and even once-niche innovators are now being re-evaluated through a "strategic materials" lens. Here are seven materials-focused stocks worth watching, starting with the two that just rang the bell at record levels.

Vulcan Materials (NYSE:VMC)

Old-school aggregates, new-school momentum

Vulcan Materials stock surged to an all-time high above $313.37 per share last week, a reminder that crushed stone, sand, and gravel remain foundational to every modern megatrend, data centers, highways, power infrastructure, and healthcare facilities included.

The company will host its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings conference call on Tuesday, February 17, 2026, with results released before the NYSE opens. Vulcan's steady rise reflects both pricing discipline and structural demand, as large-scale infrastructure projects move from planning to execution.

In a market obsessed with software, Vulcan represents something simpler, and harder to replace, physical materials with local scarcity and long asset lives.

Applied Materials (NASDAQ:AMAT)

The most important "materials" company in the digital world

Applied Materials also hit a new all-time high last week, touching $331 per share, as investors continued to reward its central role in semiconductor manufacturing. While often labeled a tech stock, Applied is fundamentally a materials engineering company, enabling atomic-level deposition, etching, and materials modification.

In December, the company reaffirmed its shareholder-friendly posture by approving a $0.46 quarterly dividend, payable March 12, 2026. That marked eight consecutive years of dividend increases. In fiscal 2025 alone, Applied returned nearly $6.3 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks and exited the year with $14.0 billion still authorized for repurchases.

As AI, advanced logic, and memory chips push the limits of physics, Applied's expertise in materials science is becoming more, not less, critical.

Kraig Biocraft Laboratories (OTCQB:KBLB)

Spider silk and the future of materials science

At first glance, Kraig Biocraft Laboratories looks like a biotech outlier. In reality, it may be one of the most intriguing materials companies in the public markets.

Through genetic engineering, Kraig Labs has successfully produced recombinant spider silk, widely regarded as the toughest super-fiber known to man. Spider silk is prized for its extraordinary combination of strength, flexibility, light weight, biocompatible, biodegradable, and produced via water-based proteins rather than petrochemicals, properties that traditional synthetics struggle to match.

For decades, scientists viewed scalable spider silk production as a kind of "holy grail" for advanced materials. Many experts view spider silk as the foundational material that could unlock next-generation composites, ballistic protection, medical sutures, construction technology, and high-performance textiles.

By engineering silkworms to produce spider silk proteins, Kraig Labs has crossed a barrier that once limited spider silk to lab curiosity. If commercialized at scale, applications could range from aerospace and defense to medical sutures and wearable technologies. In a world hungry for stronger, lighter, and more sustainable materials, KBLB occupies a unique, but potentially transformative niche.

Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX)

Copper: the quiet backbone of electrification

Freeport-McMoRan is often viewed simply as a mining stock, but copper has become one of the most strategic materials on the planet. Electrification, AI data centers, EVs, and grid upgrades are all copper-intensive and there is no realistic substitute at scale.

Freeport's portfolio of long-life copper assets positions it squarely at the intersection of infrastructure and technology. As demand grows and new supply remains constrained by permitting and geology, copper's role as a critical material continues to gain recognition among policymakers and investors alike.

The next wave of innovation won't just be written in code, it will be built, mined, engineered, and spun from entirely new materials.

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