What Are the 3 Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks to Buy Right Now?

The market was once again propelled upward by artificial intelligence (AI) stocks in 2025, and that momentum is expected to continue in 2026. Let's look at three top AI stocks to buy now and potentially take advantage of the coming growth.

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Nvidia

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), the dominant player in AI infrastructure, looks poised to have another strong year. Demand for its graphics processing units (GPUs) remains insatiable, as hyperscalers spend aggressively on building out their massive data centers. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump lifted some of his administration's restrictions on Nvidia's ability to sell chips in China, which should only add to the company's already stellar growth outlook.

While the company is seeing some added competition, its CUDA software platform, where most foundational AI code was written and optimized for its chips, continues to give it a huge edge. Meanwhile, the company hasn't been sitting still: It made investments in large language makers (LLMs) OpenAI and Anthropic, bought SchedMD, and licensed technology and acquired talent from chip start-up Groq. These strategic moves should strengthen the company.

Best of all, the stock is still reasonably valued, trading at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of under 25 times next year's analyst estimates and a price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio of less than 0.7 times. Stocks with positive PEGs below 1 are generally considered to be undervalued.

Meta Platforms

One of the companies that has best demonstrated how deploying AI can power revenue growth is Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META). It is using AI to attract more users to its social media platforms and keep them on its sites longer. Today, Facebook and Instagram are more focused on entertainment than on helping people keep up with friends and acquaintances, and Meta is utilizing AI to serve users content that interests them the most, keeping them engaged for longer on its sites. This, in turn, is giving it more surfaces upon which to show ads.

At the same time, Meta has turned to AI to help its advertisers create more effective campaigns through generative AI ad creation, which can generate background images from text prompts or create videos from still images. It can also automate the entire ad campaign process and improve ad targeting to better reach potential customers. Better ad performance, meanwhile, is allowing Meta to raise its ad prices. This is all helping Facebook's ad revenue, which soared by 26% year over year in Q3, with ad impressions climbing 14% and ad prices up 10%. Meanwhile, the company has big opportunities to expand its revenue as it begins introducing ads to WhatsApp and Threads.

The stock is also attractively valued, trading at a forward P/E of 20 times and a PEG below 1.

Salesforce

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) stocks have struggled to find their footing since the AI trend began, but 2026 could be the year they begin to breakout again. One of the main candidates to lead the charge is Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), which is making a big push into agentic AI.

Salesforce's core competency has been customer relationship management (CRM), where its platform gives customers a unified view of siloed data and provides real-time insights. Having a single source of clear data is paramount for AI agents, and Salesforce has expanded on this concept. First, it introduced Data Cloud (now Data 360), which organizes and unifies data from across Salesforce and other sources. Then it went out and acquired Informatica, which specializes in data gathering and master data management. This all helped position Salesforce's platform as a sole source of truth for its customers' data, and the platform upon which they could build and deploy AI agents. That's a powerful value proposition that should help drive growth for Salesforce in the coming years.

Meanwhile, the stock is also attractively valued. It trades at a forward P/E ratio of less than 20 and a PEG of around 0.6.

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