My Top 2 Artificial Intelligence Stocks for 2026

• The booming request for AI information centers is proving to beryllium a important maturation operator for Applied Digital.

• SoundHound AI is helping its clients amended productivity, and its important gross backlog suggests that its maturation could beryllium stronger than analysts expect.

• 10 stocks we similar amended than Applied Digital ›

Artificial quality (AI) stocks person played a cardinal relation successful driving the banal market's rally successful the past 3 years, and the inclination is expected to proceed successful the caller twelvemonth arsenic well.

Various Wall Street projections suggest that the S&P 500 scale volition caput higher successful 2026 connected the backmost of robust AI infrastructure spending. Asset absorption institution DWS anticipates that the S&P 500 -- presently astir 6,964 -- volition leap to 7,500 points by the extremity of the twelvemonth connected the backmost of AI-driven growth. Deutsche Bank has a rosier forecast, expecting the scale to leap to 8,000 points by the extremity of 2026. It, too, cites AI arsenic 1 of the cardinal expected catalysts.

With each that successful mind, present would beryllium a bully clip for investors to instrumentality a person look astatine AI stocks that could assistance them capitalize connected the sector's growth. Two that I judge could beryllium among the champion to bargain for 2026 and beyond are Applied Digital (NASDAQ: APLD) and SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN).

Applied Digital is simply a cardinal subordinate successful the AI hardware ecosystem. It designs, builds, and operates information centers susceptible of moving high-performance computing applications and AI workloads.

The maturation banal was successful red-hot signifier past year, and it has gotten disconnected to a terrific commencement successful 2026. Applied Digital banal has already gained astir 50% successful the caller year, arsenic of this writing. The company's results for its fiscal 2026 2nd 4th (which ended connected Nov. 30) sent its shares flying.

Applied Digital's gross accrued by a whopping 250% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth to astir $127 million, good supra the analysts' $88 cardinal statement estimate. That stunning maturation was driven by the information halfway fit-out services it provides to tenants specified arsenic neocloud institution CoreWeave, arsenic good arsenic various hyperscalers that person been tapping the institution to physique AI information halfway capacity.

What's more, Applied Digital has started recognizing lease gross from CoreWeave for 100 megawatts (MW) of information halfway capableness that it deployed for the second past quarter. What's worthy noting is that Applied Digital has already inked lease contracts for 600 MW of information halfway capableness that it is gathering crossed its 2 campuses successful North Dakota.

And now, it's successful precocious talks with different hyperscaler to physique information centers successful aggregate regions of the U.S. The institution has a coagulated 15-year prospective lease gross pipeline of $11 cardinal nether its existent contracts with CoreWeave and different hyperscale customer. The summation of a caller hyperscaler could boost that pipeline.