Wells Fargo is betting that little-known tech stock Synaptics is a rising force in the artificial intelligence space. Analyst Joe Quattrochi gave Synaptics an overweight rating, with a price target of $95, suggesting the stock could rise about 29% from Friday’s closing price. Synaptics stock has fallen nearly 4% since the beginning of the year. Quattrochi said Sympathix stock trades at an attractive risk-reward level heading into 2026 as the company continues to transition into an Internet of Things (IoT) chip supplier. Primarily known for supplying chips and components for mobile phones and laptops, Synaptics has now shifted its focus to the rapidly growing IoT market, establishing itself as a leader in edge AI. IoT devices include always-on smart watches and smart appliances that require wireless connectivity and use edge AI to perform on-device processing in real-time rather than relying on the cloud. “Synaptics continues to transform from a mobile/PC chip supplier to a company addressing the rapidly growing edge IoT challenges (opportunities),” Quattrochi said in a Dec. 19 note to clients. Citing Gartner data, analysts estimate that the addressable edge AI computing market will be worth approximately $5 billion this year and will grow to more than $13 billion at a compound annual growth rate of 30% through 2029. SYNA 1Y Mountain Synaptics stock price performance over the past year. Quatrochi is particularly excited about Synaptics’ AI-native embedded computing platform for edge IoT devices called Astra. This essentially provides the processing hardware and other tools needed to run AI directly on smart devices. He said Synaptics’ partnership with Google is another driver of the stock’s rise. The companies announced a partnership in January 2025 to integrate Google’s open source machine learning core into Synaptics Astra AI-Native hardware. “While we are in the early stages of edge AI, we believe Synaptics is well-positioned to leverage Google’s collaboration with the new Astra family of processors and powerful wireless and sensing products to deliver differentiated integrated solutions,” Quattrochi wrote. He added, “We see demand/pipeline updates for the Astra Edge AI platform to be a key driver for the stock price, as customer sampling is already driving design wins with 2HC early revisions in 2026.” Analysts surveyed by LSEG are overwhelmingly bullish on Synaptics, with a consensus price target of 16% upside potential. Of the 14 analysts covering the company, 10 have a buy rating and 4 maintain a hold rating.
