Should You Forget Nvidia and Buy These 2 Millionaire-Maker Stocks Instead?

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is still the king of artificial intelligence (AI) stocks, but Nvidia stock has been slowing down. Although the stock is trading up 1,220% over the past five years, it's gained only 3% over the past six months.

While the company continues to demonstrate high growth and incredible opportunity, the market appears wary.

If you're looking for the next millionaire-maker stock, you might want to look somewhere else. While I don't recommend forgetting Nvidia entirely, and I believe it can still add value to a strong portfolio, risk-tolerant investors might consider other avenues to millionaire status.

Image source: Getty Images.

Take, for example, Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) and Pagaya Technologies (NASDAQ: PGY). They're both growing at fast rates, but the stocks are trading much cheaper than Nvidia, giving them more room to run.

Data by YCharts.

The case for Sandisk

Sandisk stock has exploded in value, rising 1,410% over the past year, and the data storage company still has a huge long-term opportunity.

It generally delivers robust growth, but with the advent of data centers, for which it offers important infrastructure, growth is accelerating. In the fiscal 2026 second quarter (ended Jan. 2), revenue increased 61% year over year, driven by data center revenue growth of 64% quarter over quarter. Its other businesses, commercial and personal storage solutions, are also thriving.

Beyond its recent stellar performance, management still sees meaningful growth opportunities ahead. It's working with several hyperscalers, and demand is significantly outpacing supply.

Sandisk is benefiting from AI trends right now, but it's underpinned by its dominant consumer-end businesses, providing it with low-risk, long-term growth drivers.

The case for Pagaya

Pagaya uses AI to drive a credit business, identifying qualified borrowers through its machine learning platform, and bundling loans as asset-backed securities (ABS) to institutional funders. It just announced a new, $800 billion loan securitization funded by 32 investors, and it's the largest U.S. personal loan ABS issuer in the market.

It partners with many clients you'll recognize, including U.S. Bank, Visa, and SoFi Technologies, and it has 31 lending partners across a range of product types, including personal loans, credit cards, and auto loans.

It helps these partners approve more loans by using AI to evaluate applications and offloading the risk onto the institutional funders. It claims to be able to evaluate an application in less than one second, and it embeds its models straight into the partner platform for seamless transactions.

Pagaya represents the future of financial services, and it's just getting started.

Jennifer Saibil has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia, U.S. Bancorp, and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends Pagaya Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.