2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Leaders to Buy and Hold Forever

Key Points

• Nvidia dominates the global AI infrastructure market, with its new cutting-edge GPUs, advanced networking solutions, and a massive CUDA developer base.

• Microsoft is rapidly becoming the backbone of the enterprise AI software market.

• 10 stocks we like better than Nvidia ›

The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is now the main engine driving the growth of some of the world’s most valuable companies. Many of these technology giants use AI not only to cut costs or boost efficiency, but to help transform entire industries and build platforms that are likely to be the drivers of global expansion over the next decade.

For investors with a long-term mindset, the smartest move now is to target the best of these businesses based on their proven cutting-edge technologies, scale, and long-term vision. Let’s highlight two of these AI players taking a leading role and find out why they are well-positioned to create significant value in the long run.

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1. Nvidia

Semiconductor giant Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the undisputable leader in the global AI infrastructure market. The company’s cutting-edge GPUs have become the backbone of AI workloads worldwide and help power massive cloud data centers and enterprise AI applications.

Nvidia’s recent financial performance highlights its business momentum. In the second quarter of fiscal 2026 (ended July 27, 2025), revenue surged 56% year over year to $46.7 billion, driven by explosive demand for its new Blackwell platform. The company began production shipments of its new Blackwell Ultra GB300 racks in the second quarter, marking a smooth transition from the earlier GB200 systems. Net income was also up 59% year over year to $26.2 billion.

Nvidia has transformed itself from a gaming-focused GPU provider to a full-stack AI platform player. Beyond hardware, the company has built a strong competitive moat with its proprietary Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) parallel computing software platform, used to optimally program GPUs. With over 5.9 million developers using CUDA worldwide, the company has created an exceptionally strong developer ecosystem that raises switching costs for clients.

Nvidia has also made rapid advances in AI-optimized networking solutions. Management highlighted that NVLink 72, an advanced interconnect architecture used in Blackwell AI platform, enables each rack (enclosure used to organize multiple data center servers) to operate as a single computer, significantly improving efficiency for reasoning and agentic AI workloads — an advantage that is becoming critical as data centers face power constraints.

Nvidia is also focusing on opportunities in areas such as robotics, automotive, and automation. Spending on AI infrastructure globally is projected to be somewhere between $3 trillion and $4 trillion by the end of the decade. Nvidia is well-positioned to be a key recipient of this spending.

Although the company trades at a rich valuation of 39.5 times forward earnings, Nvidia’s robust growth prospects make it an exceptional pick for long-term investors — even at elevated valuation levels.

2. Microsoft

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is positioning itself as a foundational platform in the AI-powered economy, building a comprehensive ecosystem of AI products and large-scale technology infrastructure. Once known primarily for its productivity suite and Windows operating system, the company is now embedding Copilot virtual AI assistant and agentic AI capabilities across its core offerings. Subsequently, the company is reshaping how clients organize and execute workflows.

Copilot (across all applications) counts over 100 million monthly active users, and its backend is powered by GPT-5. The company expects Copilot to help users connect with specialized AI agents for solving business challenges.

Microsoft is also strengthening the cloud, data, and model infrastructure that powers Copilot and the growing ecosystem of AI products. The company’s Azure computing business, which forms the hardware layer of its technology infrastructure, crossed an annualized run rate of $75 billion, up 34% year over year at the end of the second quarter. Although the company has built over 400 Azure data centers across 70 regions and has added over 2 gigawatts of new capacity in the past year, it is still seeing demand outpacing supply. This highlights the growth potential in the data center space.

Microsoft Fabric, an AI-powered data and analytics platform, is rapidly gaining traction, with revenue soaring 55% year over year in the second quarter. The company is also positioning Azure AI Foundry as the model layer to help clients build and manage AI applications and agents at scale. Foundry was used by over 80% of the Fortune 500, while the Foundry Agent services are powering agent development at more than 14,000 enterprises.

Microsoft’s security offerings are also strengthening its business. The security business caters to nearly 1.5 million customers and had already generated over $20 billion in revenue in fiscal 2023 (ended June 30, 2023). The security business will become even more significant, as the rising adoption of generative AI has also added new ways in which hackers can break into an enterprise system. Additionally, it is also tightly integrated into Copilot and the Microsoft 365 suite, which further strengthens its value proposition.

Microsoft trades at about 37.4 times forward earnings. This rich valuation, however, is supported by its accelerating AI-driven growth. With rising Copilot adoption, expanding Azure scale, and a fast-growing security business, it is proving to be a smart buy for long-term investors.

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Manali Pradhan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Microsoft and Nvidia. The Motley Fool 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.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.