Nvidia is highly profitable and has a major market share lead.
No one can match Taiwan Semiconductor's dominance in chip manufacturing.
Both companies will remain AI leaders for years to come, and their shares are trading at a discount right now.
There's a growing list of artificial intellgence (AI) stocks becoming available to investors, which will soon include Anthropic and OpenAI, and now includes SpaceX (which owns the xAI artificial intelligence company).
But despite the allure of some of these AI companies, investors may be better off focusing on established technology companies that have already carved out leads in their respective niches.
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Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) have done exactly this and could benefit for the next decade as artificial intelligence continues to expand. Here's why putting some money into these two stocks could be a smart move in the years ahead.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia hardly needs an introduction at this point, but it's important to highlight some of the advantages the company has over some of its AI peers. Namely, its profitability, dominant market share, and relatively well-priced stock.
The company reported net income of $1.87 per share in the most recent quarter, up a staggering 140%. Surging demand for Nvidia's processors has led to years of blockbuster profits, and while that could slow if data center spending slows down, it's certainly not going away.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on the company's fiscal 2027 first-quarter earnings call:
Demand has gone parabolic. The reason is simple. Agentic AI has arrived. AI can now do productive and valuable work. Tokens are now profitable, so model makers are in a race to produce more. In the AI era, compute capacity is revenue, and profits.
This profitability is a key advantage Nvidia has over some other AI stocks. While others may be growing more quickly or seeing explosive share price gains, they might not have the profits that back them up. Over time, profitability is what matters, and Nvidia's got it in spades.
Nvidia is also the far-and-away leader in AI processors right now, with 86% of AI revenue in data centers. Its closest competitor is AMD, which has just 7% of the market.
What's more, Nvidia's shares look like a good deal right now. The company's stock has a trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 32, compared to the tech sector average P/E ratio of 43.
Lots of profit, a big market share advantage, and an inexpensive stock are a unicorn among AI companies, making Nvidia stock a no-brainer buy and hold.
It's easy to get caught up in the hype around new AI models and forget that there are actually physical processors that enable all the impressive computing.
Taiwan Semiconductor, also called TSMC, is responsible for this more than anyone else because it manufactures about 68% of the world's processors and 90% of advanced processors.
That's a heck of a lead for an artificial intelligence company, and its manufacturing prowess has driven impressive financial results. Revenue rose 41% in Q1 2026 to nearly $36 billion, earnings grew 65% to $3.49 per American depositary receipt (ADR), and management says it is tapping into a $1.5 trillion total addressable market for global processors (by 2030).
And management believes the role it plays as the leading AI processor manufacturer will remain. CEO C.C. Wei said on the Q1 2026 earnings call:
[O]ur conviction in the multi-year AI megatrend remain high, and we believe the demand for semiconductors will continue to be very fundamental.
Like Nvidia, investors can scoop up TSMC's stock at a relative discount. Taiwan Semiconductor shares have a P/E ratio of about 38, below the tech sector average.
And with the company's lead in chip manufacturing highly unlikely to be eroded anytime soon, buying and holding Taiwan Semiconductor stock for the next decade could be a very wise move.
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Chris Neiger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.