This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
Investors are always on the lookout for the next big technology breakthrough. And in recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) emerged as this potential game changer. The idea is AI will make the world a more efficient place, and importantly, help companies save money and increase their ability to rapidly innovate.
Many companies in the space -- those developing or using AI -- already have seen their revenue soar, and investors have taken notice. They've piled into these stocks and often reaped the rewards as AI stocks have driven gains in the S&P 500. And, with the AI market forecast to reach into the trillions of dollars in just a few years, there may be a lot more to gain well into the future.
Of course, there are many AI stocks out there, so choosing just a few may seem overwhelming. It's important to consider each company's path so far, competition, and prospects down the road. And with all of this in mind, two in particular look like no-brainer AI stocks to buy hand over fist for 2026. Let's check them out.
1. Nvidia
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) may be the most well-known AI stock on the planet thanks to its dominance in the AI chip market. The company makes the graphics processing units (GPUs) that fuel top AI tasks such as the training and inferencing of large language models (LLMs). The tech giant benefits from its early entrance into the AI market -- and its focus on innovation has kept it in the top spot.
All of this has led to enormous gains in earnings, with revenue and net income climbing in the double and triple digits in recent quarters -- and revenue has reached record levels. Nvidia has powered the early phases of the AI boom, but the company also is perfectly positioned to drive the next chapters, too. This is because Nvidia has tailored its chips to serve inferencing -- seen as the next big growth area for AI -- and expanded its offerings into a variety of products and services to suit customers' AI needs.
Nvidia also has made smart strategic moves -- for example, partnering with Nokia to develop AI for telecom, and just recently, acquiring the inferencing technology of start-up Groq.
So Nvidia is very likely to continue generating significant growth as the AI story unfolds, and that makes it a no-brainer buy for the coming year.
2. Amazon
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is both a user and seller of AI, and that's helped it become one of the early winners of the AI race. The company applies AI to its e-commerce business, helping it design more efficient delivery routes, for example, and offer shopping assistance to customers. By making shopping easier and delivery faster for customers, they're likely to keep coming back -- and efficiency also helps Amazon lower its cost to serve.
Though you may associate Amazon mainly with e-commerce, the company's biggest profit driver actually is another business: cloud computing. And through this unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company is scoring a major AI victory.
AWS, the world's biggest cloud provider, offers customers a wide variety of AI products and services, from leading Nvidia chips and AWS' own chips targeting the cost-conscious customer to a fully managed AI service called Amazon Bedrock. And these are only a few examples. This along with AWS' full range of offerings beyond AI have helped the unit reach an annual revenue run rate of $132 billion.
Amazon is a no-brainer AI stock to own because the company has delivered growth over the years thanks to its e-commerce and cloud businesses -- so the company doesn't depend uniquely on AI for revenue. But AI offers Amazon the potential for explosive growth in the years to come, making a positive picture even brighter.
And today, trading for only 32x forward earnings estimates, it's a reasonably priced tech stock to add to any AI portfolio.
This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
