Ark Invest Says AI Spending Could Triple: Here’s the Stock to Buy for 2026 | The Motley Fool

In her Big Ideas 2026 report, fund manager Cathie Wood of Ark Invest (ARKK 3.57%) predicted that annual data center capital expenditures (capex) would go from around $500 billion in 2025 to $1.4 trillion in 2030. If that happens, one of the best stocks to invest in will be Broadcom (AVGO +0.15%).

The ASIC king

Owners of large artificial intelligence (AI) data centers (hyperscalers) are increasingly seeking cheaper alternatives to Nvidia‘s (NVDA 0.72%) graphics processing units (GPUs), which are the main chips powering AI workloads. Nvidia’s chips are expensive, and companies generally don’t want to be beholden to one semiconductor vendor. As such, hyperscalers have begun designing their own custom AI ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) to handle some of their AI workloads, especially for inference, which is an ongoing cost.

At the same time, these hyperscalers are turning…