Agentic AI Is the Next Big Thing in AI. Here Are the 5 Best Stocks to Capitalize on It.
Agentic AI Is the Next Big Thing in AI. Here Are the 5 Best Stocks to Capitalize on It.
Keithen Drury, The Motley FoolSat, April 11, 2026 at 11:51 PM UTC
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Key Points -
Chipmakers Broadcom and Nvidia expect monster growth as AI demand rises.
Cloud computing infrastructure leaders are seeing their growth accelerate.
10 stocks we like better than Nvidia ›
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is starting to expand beyond chatbots. What's coming next is agentic AI -- software that can independently perform complex tasks on your behalf with only minimal instructions beforehand. In the coding world, AI agents are already being used widely, and that same type of automation is likely coming to other parts of the economy.
These five companies are well positioned to capitalize on this trend, and investors should consider loading up on their shares now, before agentic AI hits the mainstream.
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Investor looking at agentic AI stocks.
Image source: Getty Images.
Hardware plays: Nvidia and Broadcom
Coding software is only a small subset of the economy. However, the world doesn't yet have enough AI-capable processing power online to meet current demand. If AI agents are going to make their way into all parts of the economy, we'll need a lot more. That means continued growth for AI computing hardware companies. My two favorite investments in this space are Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO).
Nvidia is probably the most obvious pick, because its graphics processing units (GPUs) have for years been the primary computing units deployed for AI workloads. GPUs are incredibly flexible and can handle a wide variety of parallel-processing tasks, making them great contenders for continued deployment as agentic AI expands.
Broadcom is taking a different approach to the AI chip space -- it partners with its hyperscaler clients to develop custom chips that are built to handle the precise computing workloads they'll be used for. Broadcom's application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) may not be flexible, but they excel at the tasks they are designed for, and perform them at lower costs.
Both Nvidia and Broadcom are expected to put up massive revenue growth over the next few years. I believe that they will be among the best-performing investments over the next five years.
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Agentic AI Infrastructure: Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon
Most companies don't have the capital or the expertise to build high-end data centers to meet their internal AI usage needs. So instead, they rent that computing capacity from the cloud. The big three cloud computing providers are Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Web Services (AWS), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Azure, and Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google Cloud. All three are seeing huge success right now, and more will likely come their way as agentic AI becomes more mainstream.
Each of these business units put up huge growth during their most recent quarters. AWS grew revenue 24% year over year, its best quarter in over three years. Azure grew by 39%. And Google Cloud took the cake with revenue rising an impressive 48%.
These divisions are highly profitable, and all three companies have informed investors that they have massive backlogs of business clamoring for AI computing capacity, which justifies the hundreds of billions of dollars that they are spending on building out AI infrastructure. The old saying is that you have to spend money to make money, and these companies are doing just that.
As another bonus for investors considering them today, all five of these stocks are currently down by at least 10% from their all-time highs. Considering how much attention the AI sector has gotten on Wall Street over the past few years, this may come as a surprise to many investors, but these deals won't last forever. Any significant good news on the macroeconomic or geopolitical fronts could send these stocks back toward new all-time highs. Similar surges could result if they deliver blowout results during the upcoming earnings season. With these five stocks being leaders in the agentic AI space, they are brilliant buys right now.
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Keithen Drury has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Broadcom, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Source: “AOL Money”
