History Says Infrastructure Booms Create Winners and Losers. Here Are 3 AI Cloud Stocks to Watch.
Key Points
Amazon’s cloud infrastructure platform will remain a linchpin of the AI market.
CoreWeave’s neocloud business is booming as its backlog hits record levels.
As a data center REIT, Equinix will also profit from the AI market’s expansion.
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In the past, every major infrastructure boom -- in highways, rural electrification, and telecom networks -- created some big winners but left the laggards behind. Today, that same story is playing out in the power-hungry AI infrastructure market.
As more companies use AI to automate, accelerate, and optimize their operations, the market's demand for cloud-based storage and computing power will grow. Let's examine three companies that could benefit from the long-term expansion of the AI infrastructure market.
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The cloud infrastructure leader: Amazon
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) generates most of its revenue from its retail business, but most of its profits come from its cloud infrastructure platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS controlled 28% of the global cloud infrastructure market in the second quarter of 2026, according to Synergy Research Group, putting it at the top of the booming market.
AWS already hosts tens of millions of websites and apps, making it a linchpin of the modern internet. It also hosts Bedrock (a managed service that enabled over 100,000 organizations to build their own generative AI apps), SageMaker (a platform for training custom AI models), and specialized APIs for custom AI tasks. It even produces its own first-party AI accelerators. Anthropic, in which Amazon holds a major stake, is one of its top cloud infrastructure customers.
From 2025 to 2028, analysts expect Amazon's revenue and EPS to grow at CAGRs of 15% and 24%, respectively. That growth should be driven by those AI tailwinds for AWS, the stable growth of its core e-commerce business, and the expansion of its higher-margin advertising business. It still looks reasonably valued at 24 times next year's earnings.
The growing neocloud leader: CoreWeave
CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) was once an Ethereum miner, but it repurposed its cloud-based GPUs to process AI tasks after the crypto crash in 2018. Today, it operates 51 data centers in North America and Europe, up from just three at the end of 2022, and it's installed over a quarter of a million Nvidia GPUs in its servers.
CoreWeave claims its dedicated cloud-based GPUs can process AI tasks roughly 35 times faster and at 80% lower cost than AWS and other diversified cloud infrastructure platforms. Its top customers already include Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, and its contracted revenue backlog hit $104.2 billion in its latest quarter. That's more than 20 times the $5.1 billion in revenue it generated in 2025.
From 2025 to 2028, analysts expect CoreWeave's revenue and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to grow at CAGRs of 102% and 110%, respectively. Those are jaw-dropping growth rates for a stock that trades at seven times next year's sales and 13 times its forward adjusted EBITDA.
The data center REIT leader: Equinix
Equinix (NASDAQ: EQIX), which operates 282 data centers on six continents, is the world's largest data center real estate investment trust (REIT). It leases its centers to more than 10,500 tenants, including over 60% of the Fortune 500, and enables its customers to communicate directly with each other through 522,000 metro interconnections.
Equinix also splits its data centers into smaller and denser units than many of its peers, enabling it to serve a broader range of industries and smaller businesses. Unlike Amazon and CoreWeave, which don't pay any dividends, Equinix pays a forward yield of 2%. As an REIT, it must distribute at least 90% of its taxable income as dividends to maintain a lower tax rate.
From 2025 to 2028, analysts expect Equinix's EPS to grow at a 15% CAGR. It might not seem cheap at 60 times this year's EPS, but it trades at just 24 times the midpoint of the full-year outlook for its adjusted funds from operations (AFFO) per share -- which is a more accurate gauge of profits for REITs. That makes it a safe, income-generating play on the AI market.
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Leo Sun has positions in Amazon and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Equinix, Ethereum, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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