The Best Stocks to Invest $10,000 in Right Now

If you're investing a large chunk of money, like $10,000, you're likely going to want to stick to market leaders with strong growth potential trading at reasonable prices. Let's look at three leading artificial intelligence (AI) stocks that fit that bill.

Nvidia: The AI infrastructure king

The engine that is powering the AI infrastructure buildout, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) remains well positioned to benefit from the continued surge in data center spending. Demand for its chips continues to be off the charts, as its graphics processing units (GPUs) and the ecosystem it has built around them are still the best way to train large language models (LLMs).

The company has seen incredible growth over the years, including whopping 73% revenue growth last quarter. Incredibly, it expects that growth to accelerate this current quarter, and its long-term outlook remains bright. Meanwhile, the stock is cheap, trading at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of under 22.5.

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Alphabet: The total package

With the most complete AI stack, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) is one of the best-positioned AI stocks to own over the long haul. It is the only company that has developed both a world-class LLM and its own custom AI chips. By having its own AI chips, Alphabet has a huge cost advantage with AI model training and inference over competitors that are largely beholden to Nvidia. Best of all, as the need for computing power grows, this advantage just keeps getting bigger.

At the same time, Alphabet is seeing huge growth in its cloud computing segment, while it has embedded its Gemini AI model within its Google search business to drive revenue. Its YouTube business remains a strong contributor, while its Waymo robotaxi business holds a lot of potential. Meanwhile, the stock is attractively valued, trading at a forward P/E of just over 26.

Meta Platforms: Using AI to drive growth

While many companies are looking to demonstrate how AI can help improve their businesses, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) has already shown it can be a big growth driver. Meta is using AI to help keep users on its platform longer by improving its recommendation engine and by helping advertisers better target and convert users. This is leading to Meta serving more ads and getting higher ad prices, which is the holy grail in digital advertising.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, Meta grew its revenue by an impressive 24%, with an 18% increase in ad impressions and a 6% rise in ad prices. Its revenue growth is only expected to accelerate in Q1. Meanwhile, it is just starting to serve ads on both WhatsApp and Threads, leaving a long runway of growth with these two platforms. The stock is also a great value, trading at a forward P/E of below 21.

Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Meta Platforms, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.