The market has produced many artificial intelligence (AI) stock winners in 2025 S&P500 index soared to new heights. However, 2026 was a different story, with many of these stocks limping through the first quarter of the year.
While not every AI stock that outperformed in 2025 deserved it, the reverse is true this year: Not every stock that fell did so for a good reason. And that’s where the big opportunity lies.
With the outbreak of war with Iran and fears of spikes in investment in AI infrastructure, the market has shifted from growth stocks to value stocks. However, as the market has shown over the past two decades, top tech growth stocks are where you want to invest for the long term.
Let’s take a look at two AI stocks that outperformed in 2025 and look like buys on this 2026 pullback.
Image source: Getty Images.
1. Palantir: the AI operating system
Palantir Technologies (PLTR 6.26%) has been one of the best performing tech stocks of the past three years, continuing with a 135% gain in 2025. However, the stock has cooled off at the start of 2026, with shares down nearly 18% in the first quarter.
The stock’s weak performance this year can be attributed to its high valuation and the fact that the stock is caught up in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) sell-off. However, the company has proven to be one of the biggest winners in AI, with revenue growth accelerating for ten consecutive quarters, culminating in revenue growth of 70% last quarter.
Today’s change
(-6.26%)$-9.39
Current price
$140.68
Key data points
Market capitalization
$359 billion
Day range
$139.19 -$156.25
Range of 52 weeks
$77.27 -$207.52
Volume
2.5M
Avg. full
49M
Gross margin
82.37%
In the meantime, nothing has changed in the Palantir story. The company’s Foundry AI platform is a critical part of making AI more useful for businesses. It essentially acts as an AI operating system, helping to collect and clean an organization’s data and link it to real-world resources and processes to significantly reduce hallucinations and make AI more useful and actionable. The platform can be implemented in a wide range of industries for different use cases, giving it a huge growth path ahead.
At the same time, Palantir’s government operations remain strong and the company has demonstrated the power of its technology during the current conflict with Iran. The Maven Smart System is now considered the central nervous system of the US military.
While the stock is still not cheap, it is increasingly fairly valued and has the potential to become one of the largest companies in the world with a very valuable platform and no real competitors at the moment.
2. Broadcom: the custom chip leader
Broadcom (AVGO +4.90%) had a strong 2025, with shares up 49% on excitement about the opportunities in custom AI chips. 2026 hasn’t started nearly as well, with the stock down 10% in the first quarter as investors started to worry about the spike in AI data center infrastructure spending.
However, Broadcom’s chances have not changed. Developing custom chips is a costly and time-consuming process, so when customers sign up to work with the company to co-develop these chips, it is typically for large projects with multiple generations of chips planned. With customers in lockdown, Broadcom expects $100 billion in sales of custom AI chips in fiscal 2027 alone, which represents massive growth. This company also contributes directly to the data center networking business, which is also growing rapidly.
Today’s change
(4.90%)$16.37
Current price
$350.34
Key data points
Market capitalization
$1.6 tons
Day range
$342.52 -$354.04
Range of 52 weeks
$157.51 -$414.61
Volume
1.5M
Avg. full
26M
Gross margin
64.96%
Dividend yield
0.74%
One of the concerns at Broadcom is that its custom chip business will deliver lower gross margins, especially for third-party orders related to Alphabet‘s tensor processing units (TPUs). However, the company directly refuted this earlier this year, saying that margins on AI hardware will remain unchanged as this business scales, eliminating one of the biggest arguments against the stock.
Broadcom is one of the best large-cap growth stories on the market, and the early-year sell-off is a great buying opportunity.
