It's never too soon or too late to start investing, as stocks have a long track record of helping to build wealth over time. It doesn't take much money to get started, and with many online brokers now offering commission-free trades, it's easier than ever. So whether you have $100, $1,000, or $100,000, let's look at three tech stocks that are good places to start.
1. Nvidia
Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA) is the poster child of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, as its graphic processing units (GPUs) have become the backbone of AI infrastructure. While originally designed to speed up graphics rendering in video games, GPUs' fast processing speeds has proven to be very valuable in tasks that require a lot of fast, powerful computing power. As a result, its chips are now the main component used to train AI models and run AI inference.
While Advanced Micro Devices is a competitor in the space, Nvidia developed a wide moat through its CUDA software platform. CUDA was created to allow Nvidia's GPUs to be programmed for tasks other than graphics render, and as such, developers learned to program GPUs using this software platform. This includes for AI training and inference well before it was in the mainstream like it is today.
In the years since CUDA was created, Nvidia has continued to advance the platform by adding AI-specific tool sets and microlibraries. While AMD has its own software platform, Nvidia's is considered widely superior, which has led the company to have an approximately 90% market share in the GPU space.
Moving forward, Nvidia has a big opportunity as companies continue to race to create better and better AI models. These models need more and more GPUs to be trained on to advance. While today some of the most advanced AI models are being trained on 100,000-to-200,000-GPU clusters, there are expectations that future models with be trained using GPU clusters of 1 million or more.
So while Nvidia's stock has been a great performer the past few years, there appears to be a lot of potential upsides still remaining.
2. Alphabet
While best known for its Google search engine, Alphabet(NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG) is actually a lot more. The company is the largest digital advertising company in the world. Its adtech solutions feed not only into its Google search engine, but also into its leading video platform YouTube, its other properties (such as Gmail and Maps), and third-party sites.
YouTube is actually the largest streaming platform by viewership in the U.S., ahead of even Netflix. However, North America is not even the platform's largest geographic area by viewership -- Asia-Pacific is.
While the platform makes most of its money from advertising, it has also grown its ad-free premium subscriptions to over 100 million users. Meanwhile, YouTube does not have the same up-front content creation costs as other streaming platforms, instead sharing revenue with its content creators. This makes it a hugely valuable asset.
With Alphabet, investors are also getting the world's third-largest and fastest-growing cloud computing company. With AI workloads powering demand for cloud computing service, Google Cloud has seen its revenue and profits soar. Meanwhile, the company also has developed its own custom AI chips with the help of Broadcom, used within its data centers.
In addition to these well-established and profitable businesses, Alphabet also owns some emerging ones with a lot of promise. Its robotaxi unit Waymo has sped ahead of the competition as the only company in North America to offer paid rides. Meanwhile, the company recently made a huge breakthrough in quantum computing.
Overall, Alphabet is a great combination of market-leading and emerging businesses with a lot of growth opportunities in front of it.
Image source: Getty Images
3. Microsoft
Like Alphabet, Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT) also owns a variety of businesses. The company, of course, is best known for its worker productivity software solutions, such as Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, that are now packaged under its Microsoft 365 subscriptions. It also still owns the word's largest personal computer (PC) operating system in Windows.
In addition, it owns the second-largest cloud computing company in Azure, video game console Xbox, video game maker Activision Blizzard, job service platform LinkedIn, and software development platform GitHub, among others.
Microsoft was one of the first big tech companies to really embrace AI and look to bring it to the mainstream, with a large investment and partnership in OpenAI. Like Alphabet, its cloud computing business has been seeing strong growth. Last quarter, it said that Azure OpenAI usage had doubled in the last six months as it helps customers build out their own AI agents and applications. Given the demand for these service, the company has been aggressively spending to grow out its capacity.
One of Microsoft's biggest opportunities moving forward, meanwhile, is with its AI Copilots for its Microsoft 365 subscriptions. The company has introduced a number of AI Copilots for its productivity tools. One of the most exciting is being able to use programming language Python, which is used for things such as data analysis and visualization, in Excel, using only natural language. All in all, these Copilots can help workers perform and complete more advanced tasks, making them a valuable add-on to its 365 subscription.
At a cost of $30 per month per Microsoft 365 enterprise user, this should be a solid growth driver for the company moving forward. It will also be exciting to see how Microsoft will be able to use AI with other segments in the years ahead, especially with applications like video games.
Don’t miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity
Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you’ll want to hear this.
On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a “Double Down” stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you’re worried you’ve already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late. And the numbers speak for themselves:
Nvidia:if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009,you’d have $374,613!*
Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you’d have $46,088!*
Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you’d have $475,143!*
Right now, we’re issuing “Double Down” alerts for three incredible companies, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon.
Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Microsoft, Netflix, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
