Two AI Stocks to Buy Now: Why Nvidia and Meta Remain Strong Opportunities Despite Divergent 2025 Results

When January 2025 arrived, I made a straightforward investment thesis: artificial intelligence stocks Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) were compelling picks for aggressive investors. The reasoning was simple yet compelling—Nvidia’s processors would remain essential infrastructure for AI development, while Meta’s core social media business would generate cash to fund its AI ambitions. One year later, the outcomes tell a fascinating story about market dynamics and why both stocks to buy remain worth considering for 2026.

Market Performance Tells a Tale of Two Winners

The 2025 results painted a picture of divergence. Nvidia surged 39% while Meta gained 13%—solid absolute returns in most contexts, yet Meta’s performance proved underwhelming against the broader market. The S&P 500 delivered 16% gains, making Meta a relative laggard despite genuine business strength. Yet this performance gap reveals critical insights about market expectations and valuation dynamics, not fundamental business weaknesses.

Nvidia’s outperformance reflected justified enthusiasm around its accelerating product roadmap and sustained hardware demand. Meta’s relative underperformance, however, masked a core business firing on all cylinders—the market simply priced in significant skepticism about the company’s capital-intensive AI infrastructure investments.

The Hardware Imperative: Why Nvidia Remains a Top Stocks to Buy

Nvidia’s investment narrative from 2025 remains virtually unchanged entering 2026, which paradoxically makes it an even more compelling opportunity. The company’s graphics processing units (GPUs) maintain their status as the gold standard for training and deploying artificial intelligence models—a competitive moat that appears durable.

What’s shifted is the product roadmap’s acceleration. After 2024’s Blackwell architecture gains and last year’s Blackwell Ultra improvements, Nvidia will introduce the Rubin platform in 2026. This represents a quantum leap: companies using Rubin will train AI models with 75% fewer processors while handling inference workloads with 90% fewer chips compared to current Blackwell standards.

Wall Street’s growth projections remain unchanged at 52% for fiscal 2027 (ending January 2027), matching predictions from 2025. Yet the stock’s valuation compressed from 47 times forward earnings in January 2025 to 40 times today. This represents a meaningful discount despite identical business outlooks—a classic opportunity when fundamentals hold steady but prices decline.

Meta’s Hidden Value: Social Strength Masks AI Opportunity

Meta’s base business demonstrated robust momentum through 2025. Q3 revenue accelerated 26% year-over-year, continuing the acceleration trend from Q2. This sustained growth directly contradicts bearish narratives about social media maturity—the company’s core properties remain powerful advertising platforms.

The stock’s 15% decline from August’s all-time highs stems entirely from capital allocation concerns. Wall Street remains anxious about Meta’s 2026 data center spending and return on investment from massive AI infrastructure deployment. This uncertainty created a valuation valley: at 22 times forward earnings, Meta trades at a reasonable multiple reflecting genuine business quality.

The critical variable is execution. If Meta’s AI spending translates into tangible competitive advantages and revenue growth acceleration, substantial upside awaits. If returns prove disappointing, the stock may languish in lower valuation ranges. Today’s market is essentially pricing in failure—making this one of the most interesting stocks to buy for contrarian investors comfortable with measured risk.

Why Both Represent 2026 Opportunities

Emerging from 2025, these stocks to buy offer different but complementary narratives. Nvidia provides a direct play on continued AI infrastructure spending with accelerating product cycles and stable fundamentals. Meta offers a valuation-driven opportunity where business quality exceeds market perception.

The Motley Fool’s track record illustrates the potential: Netflix investments made in 2004 generated 45,000%+ returns, while Nvidia positions recommended in 2005 produced 1.1 million%+ gains. While past returns don’t guarantee future results, they underscore how major companies in transformative industries can deliver exceptional long-term value.

Both Nvidia and Meta represent exactly this type of foundational opportunity—companies leading technological transitions while trading at multiples disconnected from their business quality.