The world is changing, and quickly. New technology is gripping society, affecting how people and businesses do things, and influencing the stock market. Each year tells its own story; thus far, 2025 has been shaky relative to the past two years. Unlike many Wall Street professionals who must obsess over short-term performance, individual investors can zoom out and look at the big picture.
For most people, long-term investing is where it's at.
Check out these five technology stocks at the forefront of the hottest growth trends. Buying them in 2025 could deliver outsized growth and portfolio-altering returns over the next five years.
1. Arm Holdings
Semiconductors are the building blocks of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies. Arm Holdings(NASDAQ: ARM) creates intellectual property (IP) for chip design. Companies have cumulatively built and shipped more than 310 billion chips with Arm-based designs. Arm generates highly profitable revenue from royalties and fees on its IP. Arm-based chips enable numerous high-growth, chip-heavy applications, including personal electronics and phones, cloud computing and data centers, AI, self-driving vehicles, and more.
Arm Holdings increased its global market share from 43% to 47% from 2022 to 2024. It's arguably the simplest way to invest in a world that will use an increasing amount of semiconductors over the next five years and beyond. Analysts are bullish on the company's growth prospects; current estimates call for nearly 31% annualized earnings growth over the long term (three to five years).
2. CrowdStrike
Cybersecurity has become increasingly complex as hackers and other bad actors grow increasingly sophisticated in their attacks. CrowdStrike(NASDAQ: CRWD) has emerged as perhaps the industry's top next-generation security vendor. CrowdStrike's Falcon security platform is cloud-native and uses AI to identify and stop threats faster. CrowdStrike has garnered industry recognition and protects over 74,000 organizations, including over half of the Fortune 500 companies.
The company specializes in endpoint security but has aggressively expanded its platform with product modules. The resulting cross-selling has fueled impressive and profitable growth. CrowdStrike's nearly $4 billion in trailing-12-month revenue is still a fraction of an addressable market management estimates will grow to $250 billion by 2029. Analysts expect 34% annualized long-term earnings growth for CrowdStrike.
3. Nvidia
The AI boom has benefited Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA) the most. Its Hopper (H100) chips became the gold standard for training AI models like ChatGPT. Nvidia's business has soared to over $130 billion in trailing-12-month revenue, and analysts believe that will rise to $250 billion by the end of next year. The company's next-generation AI chips, Blackwell, have been a tremendous success. Nvidia has a product roadmap for the next several years as AI companies seek better chips to make their models as intelligent and cost-efficient as possible while using as little energy as possible.
Steady chip demand has analysts looking for 35% annualized long-term earnings growth. Investors can buy this stock to benefit from AI's continued build-out phase. Admittedly, Nvidia now almost entirely depends on data center chip sales. Investors should look at how the company works to expand its AI footprint beyond this to new use cases moving forward. Some possibilities include self-driving vehicles and humanoid robotics. Nvidia is already looking at these new opportunities and has built software platforms for developers to help tie its chips into these technologies.
4. Broadcom
Different chips serve different purposes in technology. Broadcom(NASDAQ: AVGO) built its company on chips used for networking and connectivity. However, the business is diversifying into new areas. Broadcom has invested in becoming a major player in enterprise mainframes and software. Today, the company's business is split roughly 60/40 between semiconductor solutions and infrastructure software.
AI was already a tailwind for Broadcom's existing semiconductor solutions but has presented new growth opportunities. Broadcom is designing AI inference chips, which help AI models apply their intelligence to new data and real-world applications. The company has established partnerships with multiple AI hyperscalers, and management sees AI-related revenue soaring over the next several years. Analysts believe Broadcom could grow earnings by an average of 21% annually over the long term.
5. Nintendo
Video gaming is arguably an underrated market. You don't seem to see it in the news as much as in film, television, or music. Yet, there are over 3 billion gamers worldwide, and the industry is worth approximately $217 billion, more than those other three industries combined. Nintendo(OTC: NTDOY) is a gaming giant with beloved gaming franchises, including Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pokémon, and more. The company is most known for its popular Switch gaming device today.
Nintendo's new Switch 2 device will arrive in June. It's a potential growth catalyst because Nintendo has a decorated track record. It has launched three of the top four all-time best-selling gaming systems (the current Switch is third). Meanwhile, the gaming industry should continue to grow. Grand View Research estimates that the global gaming industry will enjoy 13% annualized growth through 2030. The Japanese company is also a great way to add international growth to a well-diversified portfolio.
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Justin Pope has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends CrowdStrike and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and Nintendo. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
