It's hard to narrow down the best of any category to only one favorite. That's true whether we're talking about the greatest football player of all time, the best actor, or the top musical artist.
Choosing the most outstanding artificial intelligence (AI) stock is difficult, too. What is the single best stock to buy for the AI revolution?
Image source: Getty Images.
Multiple worthy contenders
Answering that question isn't easy because there are multiple worthy contenders. Nvidia (NVDA -0.67%) absolutely makes the list. It's the largest company in the world based on market cap. Nvidia's GPUs remain the gold standard for training and deploying AI systems. The company's technology is also used in AI-powered robots and self-driving vehicles.
I like Microsoft (MSFT 0.26%), too. Its Azure is the second-largest cloud platform. The company has embedded generative AI into its software products that are used by millions of people across the world. Microsoft also arguably represents the best way to invest in ChatGPT developer and AI pioneer OpenAI, which doesn't trade publicly at this point. The two companies are close partners, and Microsoft has invested in OpenAI.
If you're thinking about the next frontiers for AI, Meta Platforms (META -2.29%) especially stands out. The Facebook and Instagram parent is going all-in on developing artificial superintelligence (ASI). Meta also leads the fast-growing AI glasses market.
Ark Invest's Cathy Wood and Wedbush analyst Dan Ives think that Tesla (TSLA -1.41%) is the best AI stock. Tesla ranks as the largest holding in Wood's Ark Invest portfolio. Ives views Tesla as the most undervalued AI stock on the market. Tesla is best known for its electric vehicles (which feature AI self-driving technology), but CEO Elon Musk predicts that its Optimus humanoid robots will be the company's greatest growth driver in the future.
Checking off all the AI boxes
I think solid cases can be made for Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, and Tesla as the single best AI stock to buy. However, my vote goes to another AI leader -- Google parent Alphabet (GOOG -0.04%) (GOOGL -0.16%). This company checks off all the AI boxes, in my view.
Alphabet's Google Cloud is the fastest-growing major cloud provider. The unit uses Nvidia's GPUs, but has also developed Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) that can be more cost-effective in specific machine learning operations.
Like Microsoft, Alphabet has integrated generative AI into many of its products, including Google Search and Google Workspace productivity software. Its Google Gemini large language model (LLM) competes against OpenAI's GPT-5. Google's research into transformers (the "T" in GPT) paved the way for today's LLMs, by the way.
Google DeepMind is actively working on artificial general intelligence (AGI), a critical stepping stone to ASI. Google Glasses were a predecessor to Meta's AI glasses. Google teamed up with Warby Parker to develop smart glasses using the extended-reality operating system Android XR that will compete against Meta's devices.
Alphabet's Waymo unit has a solid head start on Tesla in the autonomous ride-hailing market. Google DeepMind is developing humanoid robots that use the Gemini 2.0 AI model. And, with apologies to Wedbush's Ives, Alphabet's stock appears to be more attractively valued than Tesla on every commonly used metric.
Is Alphabet the single best stock to buy for the AI revolution?
Are there risks for Alphabet? Absolutely. Rivals are hoping to chip away at Google Search's market share. Some industry observers have even predicted that generative AI presents an existential threat to Google Search. Alphabet's dominance in multiple arenas makes it a big target for regulatory agencies in the U.S. and Europe.
However, Google's integration of generative AI into its search engine appears to be paying off so far. The regulatory threat against Alphabet also doesn't seem nearly as concerning after a federal judge didn't impose the worst-case penalties against the company in a recent decision in an antitrust case.
Multiple stocks will be big winners in the AI revolution, probably including all of the ones discussed earlier. However, if I had to pick the single best AI stock to buy, it would be Alphabet.
