5 Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Ready for a Bull Run

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is proving to be a game-changing technology and with it, several companies are emerging as winners in this sector of the economy. The stocks for many of these companies have already seen large gains. But with AI still looking to be in the early innings, many of these stocks have additional room to run.

Let's look at five AI stocks that could be set to continue to run higher in the coming years.

1. Nvidia

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is already one the biggest beneficiaries of AI, as its graphics processing units (GPUs) have become the backbone of the AI infrastructure buildout. Demand for its chips is insatiable, and it appears there will be no letup as large language models (LLMs) need ever-increasing computing power and thus GPUs to be trained on as they become more advanced.

With its CUDA software platform long ago becoming the standard on which developers learned to program GPUs, Nvidia has a wide moat that allowed it to attain a dominant share of the GPU market. Meanwhile, the company continues to advance its technology, accelerating its design cycle to once a year (from the previous two-year to three-year cycle). This combination of a wide moat and advancing technology should allow Nvidia to keep its huge market share and continue to be one of the biggest AI winners.

2. Broadcom

For investors looking for the next big AI chip winner, Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) tops the list of candidates. The company participates in the AI infrastructure buildout through its networking portfolio, which provides switches and network interface cards (NICs), as well as through helping customers build custom AI chips.

The company is looking to grow and take share in the AI data center switching market where its Ethernet switches compete against Nvidia's InfiniBand technology. It touts that Ethernet technology is superior to InfiniBand in handling AI workloads and transferring data between GPUs. While both technologies have their pros and cons, this is a growing market that is becoming more important as GPU clusters become larger. Thus, there is a lot of potential upside for multiple players to benefit.

Broadcom's biggest opportunity, though, is in helping customers develop chips designed for specific computing and power needs. The company has been adding a number of big customers in this area, and it should be a strong growth driver in the years to come.

3. Microsoft

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) was one of the first big tech companies to embrace AI and bring it to the mainstream following a large, increased investment in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Since then, its cloud computing unit Azure has been a big AI winner, as customers embrace its services to create their own AI agents and copilots. This has led to consistent growth from Azure, including 33% revenue growth last quarter. The company is investing heavily in expansion in order to keep up with demand.

Microsoft is also in the early days of benefiting from AI within its software segment, where it has introduced several AI assistant copilots for its productivity tools within its Microsoft 365 offering. As these AI assistants advance and user adoption increases, the company has a huge opportunity in front of it. At a cost of $30 per month per enterprise user (with a Microsoft 365 subscription needed), the costs of the AI assistant in some cases can be as much as or even more than the cost of Microsoft 365 itself.

While Microsoft has been an early AI winner, its biggest opportunities may still be ahead.

4. AppLovin

One of the biggest AI software winners has been AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP), which has seen astronomical growth since it launched its AI-powered adtech platform Axon 2.0. Since then, its adtech solution has become the go-to solution for mobile gaming companies to attract new customers and better monetize their games. While growth has been explosive since its launch, the company thinks it can continue to grow its gaming customer revenue by between 20% to 30% a year.

However, the biggest opportunity for the company moving forward is expanding the use of Axon 2.0 beyond gaming customers into other segments. It just began piloting Axon 2.0 within the broader e-commerce sector and is seeing good early results. Meanwhile, AppLovin management believes the e-commerce vertical will become a meaningful revenue growth driver as early as next year.

If the company can successfully expand Axon 2.0 beyond gaming, the stock should have a lot more upside in the years ahead.

5. SoundHound

After finding early success within the automobile and restaurant verticals, SoundHound (NASDAQ: SOUN) is looking to become the world's leading AI-based commerce voice platform following its recent acquisition of Amelia. A conversational and generative AI platform, Amelia gives SoundHound a broader range of customers in industries such as healthcare, financial services, insurance, and retail.

While the company has a lot of growth opportunities remaining in the auto and restaurant industries, the stock's true upside lies in the use of its technology across a wide range of industries, each with its own specific vocabularies and interactions. These can include making doctors' appointments or answering complicated questions related to a stock trade.

If it can advance its AI voice platform to this level and serve a multitude of industries, the sky is the limit.

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See 3 “Double Down” stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of December 2, 2024

Geoffrey Seiler has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends AppLovin, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.