3 AI Stocks Crushing Nvidia This Year

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world's largest company by market value and is also one of the most popular artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. While it has kept pace with the overall market with about a 7% gain, several other AI stocks have done far better. Although this trio isn't as surefire a bet as Nvidia is, they can still make for an intriguing investment in their own right.

Nebius (NASDAQ: NBIS), CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), and Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) have all outperformed Nvidia so far this year, and if their growth rates continue, I wouldn't be surprised if that trend persists.

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CoreWeave

CoreWeave has made investors a lot of money so far in 2026. The stock is up more than 65%, but nearly all of its rise has come since the start of April. Nvidia actually owns a fair bit of CoreWeave stock, which shows that Nvidia believes this stock can outperform itself. That's a major vote of confidence and gives credence to the idea that CoreWeave is a top investment pick.

CoreWeave offers its clients access to a vast GPU computing infrastructure. This allows them to accelerate AI training and is mostly being used as boosted training capacity with some major AI hyperscalers. This has led to huge growth for CoreWeave, and Wall Street analysts believe that its revenue will grow 143% in 2026 and 89% during 2027. That underscores the booming demand for AI computing and will likely lead to more CoreWeave outperformance.

Nebius

Similar to CoreWeave, Nebius is also a Nvidia holding. Once again, Nvidia was right to invest in Nebius because its stock is up more than 80% so far in 2026. Nebius isn't all that different from CoreWeave, as it offers AI-first cloud computing infrastructure. However, Nebius offers a full-stack setup, which lets users run their AI models, rather than use the infrastructure for a training boost. Both of these business models are clearly panning out, and each has a niche it's catering to.

Nebius is growing a lot faster than CoreWeave, as Wall Street projects 523% growth in 2026 and 206% in 2027. Few stocks anywhere are delivering that level of growth, and if Nebius can meet those expectations, I have no doubt that the stock will continue to deliver greater gains than Nvidia.

Applied Digital

Last is Applied Digital, which is not a current Nvidia investment. However, it used to be, as Nvidia sold shares during Q4. This may be a red flag, but it could also just be Nvidia shuffling its investment dollars to a different company. Regardless, that move hasn't been the greatest from an investing standpoint because Applied Digital's stock is up 37% this year. That's a bit less than the other two, but it's still impressive.

Applied Digital is essentially acting as the landlord for many cloud companies, including CoreWeave. It builds a data center and equips it to cool and supply power to the facility properly, then a tenant like CoreWeave comes in and fills it with computing units. This has been a successful business model so far, with revenue rising 139% during its most recent quarter. If Applied Digital can continue delivering strong quarters like this, it can easily keep outperforming Nvidia.

All three of these stocks are worthy investment picks, but each of them is riskier than investing in Nvidia due to one factor: profits. None of these businesses is profitable and they are taking on debt to build out their footprint to capture the booming AI demand now, then optimize for profits later once the demand boom is over. This may or may not work out for each company, and that's something investors need to watch for. On the other hand, Nvidia is fully profitable now, so it's still a worthy investment in its own right, even if it is underperforming at this point.

Keithen Drury has positions in Nebius Group and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.