The AI Stocks That Insiders Are Loading Up on for 2026

There hasn't been a lot of insider buying from executives and directors at artificial intelligence (AI) companies recently, but two companies that saw insiders step up and buy shares at the end of 2025 were Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) and SentinelOne (NYSE: S).

Salesforce Director David Blair Kirk, who was previously the Chief Scientist and VP of Architecture at Nvidia, picked up over 1,900 shares in mid-December, spending more than $500,000. Activist firm ValueAct also acquired another $25 million worth of Salesforce stock in December.

Over at SentinelOne, Director Mark Peek bought nearly $600,000 worth of shares of the AI cybersecurity company in mid-December. Peek was previously the chief accounting officer at Amazon and CFO at VMware, which is now owned by Broadcom. He was also co-president at Workday.

The question on investors' minds, though, is whether they should follow these insiders and buy these stocks. Both stocks remain beaten down.

Image source: Getty Images.

The case for Salesforce

With investors writing off software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, Salesforce's stock has become compellingly cheap, trading at a forward price-to-sales (P/S) ratio of 4.7 times and a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio around 17.5 times based on 2026 analyst estimates. However, the company does have a big potential opportunity in front of it with agentic AI.

While numerous companies are chasing AI agents, Salesforce has made smart moves to position itself as a leader in the space. In order for AI to perform its best while making fewer errors, it needs to draw from clean, organized data. Through its acquisition of master data management company Informatica and the launch of Data 360, Salesforce has positioned its platform to be the master record of an organization's data. While these moves have garnered little fanfare, they could be a huge growth driver for the company as it pivots to an AI agent company.

The case for SentinelOne

Despite growing its revenue by 23% last quarter, SentinelOne trades at a forward P/S ratio of below 4.5 times 2026 analyst estimates, making it another cheap stock. That's a fraction of the valuation of larger cybersecurity competitors like CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, which are growing their revenue at a similar or slower pace.

Meanwhile, the company does have some potential catalysts. Its partnership with Lenovo to have its Singularity Platform installed on its computers is still ramping up and should be a growth tailwind. It also has an opportunity in the data query market with its Singularity Data Lake product, which can make secure data queries using natural language that are less costly and quicker than solutions like Splunk, which is owned by Cisco Systems. Meanwhile, its acquisition of Prompt Security gets it into the fast-growing AI security and data leakage market.

Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Amazon, Broadcom, Salesforce, and SentinelOne. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Cisco Systems, CrowdStrike, Nvidia, Salesforce, SentinelOne, and Workday. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and Palo Alto Networks. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.