Like many investors, I enjoy old Buffett videos for their lessons, but also for the quaint numbers of the past. Such as when he bought 5% of Disney for something like $4 million.
At the time, a single company worth $1 trillion would have seemed impossible. Now we have several.
If you're paying attention, you can see hyperscalers will soon spend more than $1 trillion on capex in a single year. That moment is closer than most realize. Why?
Last night's earnings from Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon answered the "is the AI capex trade cracking?" question with their checkbooks. They are spending and even with the "weakest" earnings of the group in Meta, you can see the revenue growth flowing as a result.
Whether you think a trillion is happening or not, one thing should be clear to you. You've gone from hearing the word capex about twice a year, to about twice a day now. Pay attention to it. Cause that money is going somewhere, and you can still take part in it.
The five picks below are drawn from 24/7 Wall St.'s $500,000 AI Investor Portfolio, managed by Technology Analyst Eric Bleeker, and you can follow along via the AI Investor Podcast. These are picks-and-shovels names built to feast on the buildout.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Broadcom wasn't one of them. Get them here FREE .
#5: Cadence Design Systems
Cadence Design Systems( NASDAQ:CDNS ) is the toll bridge. Every accelerator, custom ASIC, and networking chip in the AI buildout gets designed on Cadence or Synopsys software. Q1 2026 revenue was $1.47 billion, up 18.7% year over year, with a record $8.0 billion backlog. Management raised full-year guidance to $6.13B to $6.23B. CEO Anirudh Devgan called out "accelerating AI demand and record backlog." At 41x forward earnings, it's not cheap, but EDA is a duopoly with switching costs that make Adobe look fragile.
#4: Credo Technology
Credo Technology( NASDAQ:CRDO ) makes active electrical cables that move data inside the rack. When Blackwell racks pull forty times the throughput of Hopper, connectivity becomes mission-critical. Q3 FY2026 revenue hit $407.0 million, up 201% year over year, with non-GAAP operating margin of 49.6%. CEO Bill Brennan flagged "three new multi-billion dollar TAM expansions through ZeroFlap optics, ALCs, and OmniConnect." The stock has been a rocket: up 307% over the past year. Smallest market cap on this list at $32.4 billion, highest growth rate, narrowest exposure.
#3: Vertiv Holdings
Vertiv Holdings( NYSE:VRT ) is the physical-world play. Blackwell-class racks generate heat air cooling cannot handle, and Vertiv leads in liquid cooling and power. Q1 2026 revenue came in at $2.65 billion, up 30% year over year, with adjusted EPS of $1.17 beating the $1.01 estimate. Q4 2025 backlog stood at $15.0 billion, up 109%, with a book-to-bill near 2.9x. Vertiv was added to the S&P 500 in March 2026. Full-year 2026 guidance was raised to $13.50 billion to $14.00 billion. Shares are up 256% over the past year.
#2: Broadcom
Broadcom( NASDAQ:AVGO ) is the custom-silicon partner of choice. Q1 FY2026 AI semiconductor revenue was $8.40 billion, up 106% year over year, with the custom accelerator business growing 140% year over year. CEO Hock Tan now sees "line of sight to achieve AI revenue from chips, just chips, in excess of $100 billion in 2027." Broadcom designs custom XPUs for six strategic customers including Google, Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI, with Anthropic's compute alone projected "in excess of 3 gigawatts" in 2027. AI networking grew 60% year over year in Q1, anchored by the Tomahawk 6 switch at 100 terabits per second.
#1: NVIDIA
NVIDIA( NASDAQ:NVDA ) is the obvious headline beneficiary. I've followed this company most of my investing career, and the magnitude of what's happening still surprises me. Q4 FY2026 revenue was a record $68.13 billion, up 73.2% year over year, with Data Center at $62.31 billion and Networking up 263%. Free cash flow hit $34.90 billion in the quarter. Q1 FY2027 guidance is roughly $78.0 billion, excluding China DC compute. CEO Jensen Huang said "Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out." CFO Colette Kress flagged "line of sight to projects requiring tens of gigawatts of NVIDIA AI infrastructure in the not-too-distant future." Partnerships with OpenAI for 10GW, Anthropic for 1GW, and CoreWeave for 5GW by 2030 show demand is locked in. At a $5.08 trillion market cap, NVIDIA is the largest beneficiary in absolute dollars of every capex commitment the hyperscalers are making.
One Honest Caveat
Aggregate hyperscaler capex is heading toward $1 trillion in a single year, in my opinion, and these five companies own the layers where that money lands. Cadence taxes the design phase, Credo wires the rack, Vertiv cools and powers it, Broadcom builds custom silicon and networking, and NVIDIA sits at the center of compute. Last night's reports were the sound of checkbooks opening wider.
By the way, that Buffett Disney story? He sold about a year later for 50% gains, missing out of its entire run. This was in the late 1960s. He'll be alright. But for you and I...
A lot of these stocks have run up already. NVIDIA is up 92% over the past year, Broadcom up 114%, Credo tripled. The market sees what we see. Entry timing matters, and I'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. If you're thinking of buying any of these stocks for a quick gain you want to sell out of in 2027, please do not. The AI cycle is really just firing up, but that doesn't mean there won't be short down drafts along the way.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks
This analyst's 2025 picks are up 106% on average. He just named his top 10 stocks to buy in 2026. Get them here FREE .
