2 Top AI Stocks To Put On Your Shortlist

The AI rally that’s driven the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to all-time highs has felt like it was hitting a crescedo for three years straight.

But as hyperscalers push their own capital expenditure commitments higher and higher (Meta just raised their 2026 capex estimates to $145), and new entrants like Elon Musks’s SpaceX are expected to pour over $100b into a new Terafab one thing is clear: it’s not slowing down.

As this capital flows into a limited number of extremely mission critical suppliers the resulting bottlenecks are nothing but a tailwind for the right investors. So here are the three AI stocks on my shortlist today:

Stock 1: ACM Research Inc

ACM Research sells wafer-level packaging for semiconductors. The company has migrated from being a relatively boring, but still important, wafer cleaning company to a much higher value-add deposition supplier. This puts them toe to to with companies like Applied Materials and Lam Research. The company is signaling a 2026 growth rate of 20-30%. But that’s likely only just the beginning. We all know the world needs more semiconductors, and as major fabs like TSMC, Samsung, and Intel race to add more capacity money will continue flowing to ACM Research. While it can feel reckless to jump into an AI stock this ‘late’ in the game, fabrication facilities can take years, if not longer, to grow to meet increased demand, meaning much of the bottleneck that will benefit ACM hasn’t yet flowed through. But it will.

Stock 2: Ouster, Inc

Lidar as a technology has existed for awhile, but only became a more mainstream concept as companies like Tesla, GM, Ford, and Rivian began the push to self driving. Waymo has gone ‘full send’ with lidar sensors mounted all around their vehicles, enabling truly autonomous driving.

Ouster is one of the premier lidar equipment providers, and they’re making the jump from EVs to… well everything. The company’s technology is used in heavy equipment, manufacturing, and the most exciting robotics. The company’s L3 chip has increased range, resolution, and lower power consumption compared to prior generations. That matters because the chip is a more defensible and powerful solution that hardware itself which is likely to be pressured as it becomes commoditized.

But Ouster stands to seriously benefit as increasingly powerful AI models are able to be run locally on different machines, unlocking a world of capability and potential that simply wasn’t possible before. And, the software portion of their business from Ouster Gemini and Blue City not only provide recurring revenue, but margin buffers.

There is no shortage of compelling AI investment thesis out there today. But Ouster and ACM are still under the radar for most investors. ACM provides mission critical services for scaling chips, and Ouster has a perfect portfolio to benefit as the world transitions to more autonomy in all categories. Automotive, robotics, and industrial applications.