For each of these companies' bull cases to manifest, specific things will have to go right.
The gaps between these bull and bear scenarios are wide by design, as these are long-horizon, high-uncertainty investments.
Picking one stock to invest heavily in and hoping it moonshots is a straight-up bet -- and it's not advisable as a strategy, in my opinion. Diversification is smarter. Spreading your money across companies in an industry you find promising, and choosing companies that are building different pieces of the same future (space, software, silicon), is closer to a thesis and conviction that can make you some strong long-term profits.
If you're considering investing money to capitalize on the AI trend today -- say, a $10,000 total investment -- I'd suggest putting $2,000 each into these five stocks for the long term. Here's what those investments might grow into by 2035, and what each company will have to pull off to reach that potential.
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Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), newly public since its June 2026 IPO, trades today at around $145 per share and already has a market cap of close to $2 trillion, so the stock is widely covered.
Starlink's looming push into direct-to-cell service and Starship's path to frequent launches with cheaper costs to put payloads into space are the whole bull case with this stock. If both businesses keep compounding, a stake in the business could grow several times over by 2035. If progress with the space segment stalls, however, the stock will probably just track the market.
Palantir (NASDAQ: PLTR) trades at around $195 currently. This year, Palantir has been turning its Ontology software, the layer connecting raw data to real decisions, into something governments and companies can't easily rip out and replace once it's embedded.
U.S. commercial revenue more than doubled in the first half of 2026, and a new partnership with Nvidia to run AI inside federal agencies suggests Palantir wants to be the operating system underneath government AI, not just a vendor to it.
For the stock to deliver on its potential, Palantir's growth rate will have to maintain its historically rare pace for years, since the current stock price already has years of enormous future success baked into it. But if the company keeps going on its current tear, a $2,000 investment made today could be worth $8,000 to $10,000 by 2035. If its growth rate cools to merely very good, I'd expect that $2,000 to grow to something closer to $3,000 over that period.
Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) is trading around $340. This year, the chipmaker locked in a five-year custom chip deal with Alphabet; extended its partnership with Meta Platforms through 2029; and signed a deal to provide OpenAI with 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators.
It isn't betting on one customer; it's becoming the go-to chip designer that hyperscalers and AI labs call when they want their own chip instead of a generic one.
A reasonable bull case for the stock turns a $2,000 stake into one near $6,000 by 2035. But what has to go right for that to occur is that those client relationships deepen. The alternative possibility is that Broadcom could see those partnerships moved to the periphery as hyperscalers build their own design teams and bring more of their chip work in-house. In a bearish case where its current level of customer concentration comes back to haunt it, I'd expect that stake to be worth closer to $3,000.
AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) trades around $540 today. The chipmaker shipped its new MI400 series GPUs this year, a real AI chip with a credible multiyear roadmap behind it. (Expect it to roll out the MI500 in 2027, and the MI600 in 2028). These new accelerators are aimed at giving data centers an alternative GPU supplier to the one that dominates the market today: Nvidia. That's a lot of numbers and potentially confusing terms, but basically, AMD is building powerful AI chips that provide big tech companies with a credible general-purpose option beyond the ones provided by Nvidia.
What has to go right: AMD is well aware that one of the key areas that it has been trailing is on the software front: Nvidia's CUDA platform gives its hardware a powerful advantage. Closing that gap with developers will matter more than matching specs on paper. If it pulls that off, a $2,000 stake could reach $8,000 by 2035; if it falls short, it may only double to around $4,000.
Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE: TSM) is trading around $415. TSMC recently said it was increasing the scale of its planned investments in building out its Arizona facilities to $265 billion, and it lifted its capital expenditure budget for 2026 alone toward $64 billion, chasing what its CEO calls a multiyear AI demand megatrend, per Semafor. No matter which chip designers are the next big winners in the data center, TSMC will likely be the one actually fabricating the physical chips, which is the real investment case here.
What has to go right: Taiwan's geopolitical risks will have to stay risks rather than become realities. If that nation can avoid intensifying problems with China, it feels reasonable to anticipate a $2,000 investment growing to $6,000 by 2035; if tensions between China and Taiwan escalate, that number shrinks fast, regardless of the world's demand for high-end silicon.
Add the bull cases together and $10,000 could become somewhere north of $30,000 by 2035. If all the bear cases combine, you might barely beat inflation.
These are my own rough scenarios, not guidance from any of these companies. I'll also say this plainly: Nobody knows if AI spending will keep compounding for nine more years, or whether the sector will crack under its own weight. This very week, several of these stocks took real hits, the kind of swings that remind you none of these forecasts implies a straight line angling upward. Looking toward the end of a nine-year timeline smooths out a lot of noise, but it doesn't make the noise disappear. If you buy these names, check in on them now and then along the way, not just in 2035.
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Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Broadcom, Nvidia, Palantir Technologies, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.