Up 200% in 2026 and Counting: 3 AI Winners to Hold and 3 to Dump Right Now
Key Points
AMD, Marvell, and Lumenum are riding big trends and are well-positioned as leaders in their fields.
Micron, Sandisk, and Intel basically stumbled into their strong recent growth.
- 10 stocks we like better than Micron Technology ›
There have been a lot of big winners in the artificial intelligence (AI) space this year, with a handful of stocks gaining more than 200% thus far in 2026. However, not all winners are created equal, and I'd hold on to some of these winning stocks while dumping others.
Let's look at three winning AI stocks I'd keep in my portfolio and three I'd sell.
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1. AMD: Keep
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) has had a huge year, but there could be more to come. The company is riding two powerful waves with inference and agentic AI, and its pending acquisition of World Labs will also position it to become a potential leader in physical AI.
The company is placing significant emphasis on inference, and large deals with OpenAI, Meta Platforms, and Anthropic will drive rapid growth in the coming years. Meanwhile, it's also a leader in server central processing units (CPUs), where demand is surging due to the rise of agentic AI.
2. Marvell Technology: Keep
Marvell Technology (NASDAQ: MRVL) shares have skyrocketed this year, and it too is riding powerful trends in custom AI chips and optical networking. The company has helped Amazon develop its custom AI accelerators and has also helped Microsoft develop its own custom AI chip. It also recently won a large deal with Alphabet for complementary components that attach to its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) ecosystem.
In addition to its custom chip business, Marvell is also a leader in optical interconnects and is benefiting from the shift in AI data centers away from copper wire to optics. At its analyst day, it forecast that it could generate between $70 billion and $90 billion in revenue in fiscal 2031, blowing away analyst expectations.
3. Lumentum: Keep
Another stock riding the wave in optics is Lumentum (NASDAQ: LITE). It is one of the few companies that builds high-power indium phosphide (InP) lasers, which are used to convert electricity into light for high-speed data transmission. It is also an important player in the optical circuit switches (OCS) and co-packaged optics (CPO) markets.
Lumentum holds around a 60% market share in the electro-absorption-modulated laser (EML) market, and this is a sticky business. The company has a huge patent portfolio, and once a laser or transceiver component is certified, it's there to stay. Given its market position, the stock has greater long-term upside.
1. Micron Technology: Dump
Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) stock has been on a tear, but I'd be taking profits, despite the stock looking cheap. The company has benefited from the surge in memory prices, but it's not a technological leader in the space, trailing Korean rivals SK Hynix and Samsung in advanced memory.
The memory market is currently being driven by high bandwidth memory (HBM) demand, which is packaged with graphics processing units (GPUs) and other AI chips. However, Micron has benefited from being the least-exposed big DRAM (dynamic random access memory) maker to HBM, as demand for advanced memory has led to larger price increases in conventional memory, as the big three memory makers focus their resources on HBM. When ordinary DRAM and NAND (flash) prices start to drop, Micron's earnings could fall off a cliff.
2. Sandisk: Dump
The S&P 500's best-performing stock this year, Sandisk (NASDAQ: SNDK), has also been riding the memory boom. However, it's arguably even more of a commodity player than Micron, focusing purely on flash memory. This market has fewer barriers to entry, more players, and will likely return to balance faster than the DRAM market, making Sandisk a stock I'd be dumping.
3. Intel: Dump
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) stock made a tremendous turnaround this year, but it was more about being in the right place at the right time. The server CPU market has taken off with the rise of agentic AI, and hyperscalers are now scrambling for these chips. However, Intel has been losing market share in this space, a trend expected to accelerate in the coming years. Meanwhile, its foundry business continues to lose significant money. Take your profits and run.
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Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Amazon, Intel, Lumentum, Marvell Technology, Meta Platforms, Micron Technology, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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