Space Exploration Technologies is growing quickly, but its biggest driver could slow in a changing political climate.
Meta Platforms has seen strong AI-fueled ad growth, and its AI Muse agents could be a game changer.
Broadcom looks poised to benefit from Nvidia's woes and lead the way with custom AI chips.
Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX) is worth roughly $1.9 trillion and has the potential to eventually grow to become the largest company in the world. CEO Elon Musk has some huge goals, including putting data centers in space, earth-to-earth cargo transport, and creating a new U.S. mobile network, but none of this is guaranteed to happen within the next five years.
Meanwhile, the company's biggest growth driver, building terrestrial data centers, may have just hit a snag with sweeping midterm election victories by candidates who want to slow data center growth in the U.S. While I don't think the AI build-out will materially slow, this is a capital-intensive business, and any delays can be costly for cloud computing companies. There is also the risk that the current robust compute rental rates SpaceX is getting will eventually decline as more capacity comes online, hurting revenue growth and profitability.
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Given those risks, I think there are two stocks, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) and Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), with lower market caps that could become larger than SpaceX in five years.
Image source: Getty Images.
In my opinion, Meta Platforms is one of the most exciting AI stocks to watch over the next five years. The company has already shown that its social media advertising business is one of the biggest winners from AI, while it's also looking to disrupt the whole e-commerce segment with its Muse AI agents.
Within its core business, the company has seen robust growth through the use of AI. First, it's using AI to deliver more relevant content to users, which keeps people on its apps longer and allows it to serve more ads. Second, it's employing AI to display users more relevant ads, which is leading to higher conversion and increased ad prices. This could be seen in the third quarter, when its ad impressions climbed 10%, and its average ad price jumped 14%.
Now with its AI Muse agents, which act as everyday personal AI assistants, Meta is looking to shake up the e-commerce world. These AI agents can make purchases on behalf of users or book reservations, with Meta earning affiliate fees or a cut of the transaction fee. It opens up another large potential revenue stream for the company and positions it as a major player in agentic commerce.
With Meta trading at a forward P/E of just 17.5 times, the stock has plenty of room to run from both growth and multiple expansion over the next five years.
The custom silicon revolution is here, and Broadcom looks poised to be one of the biggest winners over the next five years. The company is a leader in application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which are custom hardwired chips designed for specific purposes. It helps turn its customers' AI chip designs into reality by providing important intellectual property (IP) and services.
As hyperscalers look to reduce costs and diversify away from Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), they have been increasing turning to Broadcom to help them develop their own custom AI accelerators. Given Nvidia's recent troubles, I'd expect this trend to accelerate in the coming years.
Broadcom helped Alphabet develop its highly regarded Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which are becoming a big growth driver as Alphabet starts selling these chips to external customers. As a result, Anthropic is projected to become Broadcom's biggest TPU customer, while Meta and OpenAI are starting to ramp up their own custom AI chips with Broadcom. As such, it sees a clear path for its AI chip revenue to rise from around $57.5 billion this past fiscal year (ending October 2026) to $230 billion in fiscal 2028.
Overall, Broadcom is another stock with explosive growth and multiple expansion potential. The stock trades at a forward P/E of only 12 times fiscal 2028 (ending October 2028) analyst estimates but has some of the best growth prospects among megacap stocks. That makes the stock a buy and gives it solid potential to become larger than SpaceX in the next five years.
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Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet, Broadcom, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Broadcom, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, and Space Exploration Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.