5 AI Stocks to Buy Right Now | The Motley Fool

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to dominate Wall Street, with spending on chips, data centers, and enterprise software expected to cross $500 billion by 2030. While Nvidia remains the face of the AI trade, investors looking for the next wave of winners need to look deeper -- across hardware, software, energy, and quantum technologies that make large-scale AI possible.

Here are five AI stocks spanning the spectrum from speculative plays to established leaders, giving investors exposure to the most important technological wave of the decade.

The quantum AI frontier

IonQ (IONQ 3.00%) is building quantum computers capable of solving problems conventional silicon can't touch. Its trapped-ion approach dramatically accelerates the training of machine-learning models -- what takes weeks on traditional GPUs could take hours on quantum systems.

The company's quantum computers excel at optimization problems central to AI: feature selection (picking the most relevant data), hyperparameter tuning (which controls the learning process), and searching for the optimum neural network architecture.

The company's systems are already available through Amazon Web Services and Microsoft (MSFT -0.24%) Azure, where they're being used to speed up AI workloads in drug discovery and financial modeling. IonQ generated about $43 million in revenue in 2024, a tiny base for a company valued on its potential. Analysts project sales could climb to $91 million in 2025 and $171 million in 2026 as adoption of quantum services accelerates.

Still, the real prize isn't near-term revenue but the possibility that quantum computing becomes essential for training AI models too complex for classical hardware. The stock trades more like a biotech: massive upside if the technology delivers, with equally high risk if it stalls.

The energy wild card

Oklo (OKLO -1.47%) is developing compact, fast nuclear reactors designed to provide 24/7 clean power to AI data centers. With a single ChatGPT query consuming 10 times the electricity of a Google search, and AI clusters projected to double global electricity demand by 2030, Oklo's Aurora design could become essential infrastructure.

The company's 50- to 75-megawatt reactors can be deployed on-site at data centers, eliminating transmission losses and grid dependence. With backing from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and partnerships being discussed with major tech companies, Oklo represents a bet that AI's energy needs will force a nuclear renaissance. Commercial rollout isn't expected until late 2027, making this a long-term play.

The enterprise AI anchor

Microsoft is embedding OpenAI's GPT models across its entire product suite, from Office to Azure. The company's $13 billion investment in OpenAI gives it exclusive cloud rights and preferential access to the most advanced language models. AI-driven revenue acceleration is already showing up in Azure's growth, which jumped 34% last quarter.

With 365 million Office users and 60% of Fortune 500 companies on Azure, Microsoft offers investors a blue chip way to play enterprise AI adoption at global scale.

The AGI enabler

Meta Platforms (META -0.46%) is investing tens of billions in AI infrastructure, building custom silicon and launching Meta AI across its social platforms. The company's Llama models compete directly with closed-source alternatives from OpenAI, while its 3.3 billion daily active users provide unmatched distribution for consumer AI products.

Meta's open-source approach to AI development could commoditize the technology faster than competitors expect. With any breakthrough in consumer-facing artificial general intelligence (AGI) likely debuting first through Meta's apps, the stock offers asymmetric upside.

The AI-driven cloud challenger

Oracle (ORCL -2.91%) has surged forward as an AI infrastructure heavyweight. Its remaining performance obligations (its booked backlog) jumped to $455 billion in the most recent quarter, a 359% boost year over year. Cloud revenue stood at $7.2 billion in the three months, up 28% from the same period a year ago.

The company expects revenue from its OCI (for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) to grow 77% to about $18 billion by fiscal year 2026. While details on all its large contracts (including those with OpenAI, Meta, and the like) are still emerging, the magnitude of Oracle's backlog and its aggressive forecasts suggest its transformation is in full swing.