By Trevor Jennewine
Publication Date: 2026-01-04 08:30:00
Wall Street analysts forecast significant upside in these artificial intelligence stocks in the new year.
Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to be the most transformative technology of the decade, if not all of human history. Analysts have compared the AI revolution to other major inflection points, including the advent of the internet, the introduction of the smartphone, and the invention of the microprocessor.
However, AI is being adopted much more quickly than all of those technologies. Indeed, Stephanie Aliaga at JPMorgan Chase writes, “In the first half of 2025, AI-related capital expenditures contributed 1.1% to GDP growth, outpacing the U.S. consumer as an engine of expansion.”
Here’s why Nvidia (NVDA +1.14%), Meta Platforms (META 1.47%), and Pure Storage (PSTG +2.98%) are my picks for the three best AI stocks to buy in January 2026.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia: 32% upside implied by the median target price
Nvidia is best known for its graphics processing units (GPUs), chips that speed up compute-intensive data center workloads like analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). But the company is truly formidable because it complements its GPUs with CPUs, networking platforms, and an unparalleled ecosystem of software tools that assist developers with building applications.
Consequently, while custom AI accelerators developed by competitors like Broadcom are generally cheaper, Nvidia systems frequently have a lower total cost of ownership because the…