The $1.4 Trillion AI Infrastructure Boom: 3 Stocks to Buy This Year

Late last year, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, stated that his company is committed to investing $1.4 trillion to develop another 30 gigawatts of computing power. The ultimate goal he has in mind is to add 1 gigawatt of compute every week. Each gigawatt currently carries a price tag of about $40 billion.

Now, whether or not OpenAI's press releases are writing checks its account balance can't cash remains to be seen. But what Altman's statement does demonstrate is the sheer amount of money pouring into the infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence (AI).

That means chip manufacturers, data center companies, and even energy providers are all set to benefit from the AI infrastructure shopping spree. The three companies in this article are the ones to profit most from it.

Image source: Getty Images.

Trillion-dollar baby

Let's start with the company that needs no introduction: Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). All the biggest AI developers use Nvidia hardware. Even Alphabet, which is trying to shift to its own Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) hardware, still uses some Nvidia hardware.

The company controls about 85% of the AI chip market. That dominance has propelled it to a colossal market cap of $4.58 trillion and quarterly revenue that grew 62% year over year to exceed $57 billion as of Q3 2025.

Now, while there are competitors emerging aside from Alphabet, namely Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm, Nvidia remains the top dog. In Q3 2025, the company's cloud graphics processing units (GPUs) sold out, and its new Blackwell chip is going gangbusters.

Nvidia got to the top by producing top-notch hardware, and it's still producing extremely high-end equipment. The entire market moves when it reports earnings. And I don't see its near-monopoly on AI hardware coming to an end anytime soon.

Don't forget to remember

AI is hungry for resources, chips, power, water -- the works. But the one resource that its demands are causing a shortage of is memory. That is, random access memory (RAM) and dynamic random access memory (DRAM), the components that allow your computer to store and recall information.

TrendForce, a Taiwanese research company, expects DRAM prices to rise between 50% and 55% in the first quarter of 2026. Companies that produce this vital hardware are seeing their revenues spike dramatically as a result.

Look no further than Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU), which actually exited the consumer PC memory market to capitalize on the AI market's demand.

In Micron's latest quarter, Q1 of its fiscal 2026, it saw its revenues climb 57% year over year to hit $13.6 billion. It's running a 45.3% gross profit margin and a 32.5% operating margin. And in Q1, it saw its free cash flow surge 7,852% year over year and its operating cash flow grow 159%.

Despite that growth and the market opportunity before it, Micron is trading at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of only 21.8 right now. That's lower than it was in Q1 2025 and considerably lower than the 46.1 Nvidia is trading at right now. And that's despite Micron's share price climbing 394% in the past 12 months.

So, Micron not only offers positively ballistic growth but also a very attractive valuation. It's sure to be a big winner as AI infrastructure spending increases. In fact, it's breaking ground on two new factories, one in New York and one in Singapore, to meet all that new demand.

Electric feel

One of the more intangible demands of AI is power. Data centers are already gluttonously consuming every electron they can, and the International Energy Agency expects their needs globally to double by the end of the decade.

In America, at least, Virginia is the data center hotspot. Of the 3,000 data centers under construction or planned across America, almost 600 of them are in Virginia. And that's on top of the 663 currently operating in the state.

Such is the demand of these data centers that Virginia, a state of almost 9 million people, has surpassed California, a state with a population of 39.5 million, as the largest energy-importing state in the country.

That's why I think Dominion Energy (NYSE: D) stands to benefit from AI infrastructure spending, seeing as though a lot of it is coming to Virginia, where Dominion is the largest power company.

Dominion is a pretty standard energy company. What's most important is its geographical location at the heart of America's data center buildout. The company saw 8.36% year-over-year revenue growth in its most recently reported quarter (Q3 2025), which is pretty brisk growth for a utilities company. It also has a gross profit margin of 49% and an operating margin of 29.4%.

All those Virginia data centers will need electricity, and Dominion is first in line to provide it.

James Hires has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Micron Technology, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool recommends Dominion Energy. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.