This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
It looks like artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. Unlike many catch phrases and buzzwords that have come and gone in the markets over the past few years, AI is driving real-world progress and generating billions of dollars in sales for top companies.
Can it go on? According to Statista, the AI market is expected to increase at a rate of 26.6% annually through 2031, reaching more than $1 trillion. Many of today's best tech companies are giving it their all, developing competitive AI businesses to grab a chunk of that market as it grows. Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) are all leading the way, and they're three no-brainer AI stocks to buy today.
1. Nvidia
Nvidia is a huge company that's still growing by leaps and bounds. It's a very rare situation for a company that already has $148 billion in trailing-12-month revenue to report growth of 69%, but that's what Nvidia did in its 2026 fiscal first quarter (ended April 27).
It's expecting to slow down, guiding for sales to increase 50% in the second quarter. That's still an unusual and amazing feat for a company of its size.
Nvidia is the leader in its industry, which is semiconductors, or the chips that drive most of today's technology. According to some estimates, it has 95% of the AI chip market. As AI grows, Nvidia gets a huge share of that growth. It's constantly upgrading its technology with new products that can handle higher workloads, ensuring that it stays in the leading position.
Although it has products in multiple categories, it's the AI chips that have catapulted it to the top of the tech heap, brought it to broad market attention, and briefly made it the most valuable company in the world. As it continues to lead and create improved products that all of its partners need, it could get there again soon.
Considering its position and opportunities, it might surprise you that Nvidia stock isn't very expensive. It trades at a forward 1-year P/E ratio of 27, making it a no-brainer buy today.
2. Meta Platforms
Meta is a social media giant, owning brands including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It uses AI in many important ways to drive business, from feeding users content they're looking for to keep them scrolling (and viewing ads) to providing a chatbot fueled by its own powerful large-language model.
It operates a solid model driven by its digital advertising business, with daily actives continually rising along with revenue per user and total revenue. Total expenses keep declining as a percentage of revenue, leading to strong profitability. Revenue increased 16% year over year in the 2025 first quarter, while operating income was up 27%.
Meta has a strong hold on literally the entire world's social media. The company had a staggering 3.43 billion people using one of its platforms in the first quarter, and it's monetizing these users through its ad business.
Advertisers continue to move over to digital platforms, and as Meta's algorithms offer them high exposure and the AI creates pinpointed opportunities, the business will likely continue to grow. CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a time when an advertiser simply tells the company what its goals and budget are, and Meta takes care of the rest of the process.
Meta is the cheapest stock on this list, trading at only 25 times forward 1-year earnings. It's a top stock with tons of potential at a great price.
3. Amazon
Amazon is building an AI platform that powers applications across businesses. Its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud segment is the leading cloud provider in the world, and Amazon is investing more than $100 billion this year to upgrade and expand this platform and offer more features and tools.
It has a three-layer system targeting every kind of client, with its signature Bedrock system at the middle layer, providing clients with a huge assortment of LLMs to create the AI apps. The bottom layer has the tools for developers to create their own LLMs, and the top layer is easy-to-use full solutions for the smaller enterprise. This is driving innovation and AI development across the spectrum.
Amazon is now also creating the chips necessary to develop the apps for smaller customers looking for cheaper options than Nvidia's best-in-class chips.
CEO Andy Jassy sees it getting much bigger. To engage with AI development, clients need to be on the cloud. For example, Amazon just announced that data and tech company Experian is moving over to AWS specifically to engage with AI and create more compelling data analysis tools. As the leader in the industry, Amazon is poised to benefit from this shift over to the cloud, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Amazon stock trades at 30 times forward 1-year earnings, and it's a great value that belongs in almost any portfolio.
This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
