Key Points

Nvidia stock is a top buy for tech investors, as the company's AI-enabling GPUs are largely powering the AI revolution.

Broadcom stock is a top buy, thanks largely to the strong demand for the company's custom AI chips.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing stock is a top buy because the world's largest chip foundry is profiting significantly from the powerful demand for AI chips, both GPUs and custom chips.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks, as a group, have been among the best-performing groups in 2025, just as they were in 2024.

Three AI stocks that were big winners in 2025, as of Dec. 23, and that I believe will be big winners again in 2026, are Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, or TSM (NYSE: TSM).

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3 Top AI stocks to buy for 2026

Stocks are listed in order of 5-year return.

Company Market Cap Forward P/E Wall Street's Estimated Annualized 5-Year EPS Growth Year-to-Date 2025 Stock Return 5-Year Stock Return Nvidia $4.8 trillion 24.0 48.5% 40.9% 1,359% Broadcom $1.7 trillion 34.4 35.9% 52% 813% Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing $1.2 trillion 24.5 30.4% 52.4% 211% S&P 500 Index -- -- -- 19% 102%

Data sources: Yahoo! Finance and YCharts. P/E = price-to-earnings ratio. EPS = earnings per share. Data as of Dec. 23, 2025.

Nvidia: The dominant maker of AI chips and related tech

Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), its flagship semiconductors, are considered the gold standard for training artificial intelligence (AI) models and deploying AI applications.

The company's data center platform had been performing well for quite some time. But demand began skyrocketing for its AI-enabling products -- its GPUs and high-performance networking products -- soon after OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. This event demonstrated to company leaders and the general public the phenomenal capabilities of generative AI.

In late October at the company's GTC (GPU Technology Conference) in Washington, D.C., CEO Jensen Huang said that management has "visibility" into $500 billion of demand for its key data center technology over the next five quarters. This demand of $100 billion per quarter, on average, is truly mind-blowing. As context, in its fiscal third quarter (ended late October), Nvidia's total revenue was $57.0 billion, of which $51.2 billion was from the data center platform.

Broadcom: The leading maker of custom AI chips

Broadcom develops semiconductors for various end markets and also develops infrastructure software.