4 No-Brainer AI Stocks to Buy Right Now

Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks once again helped lead the market higher in 2025, and with the technology still looking like it could be in its early innings, this is a good place to find investment opportunities.

As we head into 2026, let's look at four no-brainer AI stocks to buy right now.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Nvidia

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been the biggest beneficiary of the AI infrastructure boom, and that should continue. The company has more than 90% market share in graphics processing units (GPUs), which are the main chips used for AI workloads.

With data center spending continuing to ramp up and the company recently getting approval to once again sell its H200 chips to China, it has a lot of growth still ahead of it.

Nvidia has been growing quickly, and the company has created a moat through its CUDA software, the platform on which nearly all foundational AI code was written. Management sees the AI data center market growing to between $3 trillion and $4 trillion by 2030, and given its position, it will get more than its fair share of this opportunity.

2. Broadcom

If there is one emerging challenger to Nvidia, it's Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), which is helping customers design custom AI ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits). These pre-programmed chips are designed for specific tasks, and thus consume less power. As the market begins to shift toward inference, which is an ongoing cost, this becomes even more important.

After helping several large hyperscalers (owners of large data centers) design their own custom ASICs, Broadcom should begin to reap the benefits in the coming years as they start to deploy these chips. The company has said that its three earliest custom-AI chip customers are a more-than-$60 billion market opportunity in its fiscal 2027, while a fourth customer, Anthropic, has placed more than $20 billion in orders for next year, and a fifth customer just placed a $1 billion order.

It also just signed a huge deal with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Custom AI chips are a huge opportunity for Broadcom.

3. Alphabet

Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) was the first company to work with Broadcom to develop a custom AI chip more than a decade ago. It's much further along than anyone else in the space, with its tensor processing units (TPUs) now in their seventh generation. That has given Alphabet a huge cost edge, both in helping train its own AI models, as well as with its cloud computing segment.

Today, Alphabet is the only company with battle-tested custom AI chips that have been deployed at scale and a top-tier large language model (LLM) in its Gemini. That sets it apart in the AI race and just feeds into all its other businesses. It also makes Alphabet one of the best AI stocks to own.

4. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) is the company chipmakers rely on to actually manufacture their advanced chips. Making chips is difficult, and TSMC (as it's also known) has the technological expertise and scale to do it. As rivals have struggled to achieve high yields (low defect rates), TSMC has become the go-to foundry partner for the industry.

Given the huge ongoing AI infrastructure build-out, TSMC is one of the companies best positioned to benefit. It sees demand for AI chips having a mid-40% compound annual growth rate over the next few years, and it is working closely with customers to expand capacity to help meet increasing demand for advanced chips.

With current capacity constrained and demand strong, the company has also seen increased pricing power. According to industry reports, management is expected to raise prices once again in 2026. Rising demand and increased prices make TSMC a stock to own going into 2026.

Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.