While a company obtaining a $5 trillion market cap seemed like a fantasy just several years ago, I think there will not just be one company that hits this milestone next year, but two.
Let's look at the stocks ready to join the $5 trillion club in 2026.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia
With a market cap of nearly $4.3 trillion, Nvidia (NVDA +3.57%) is the world's largest company. Its stock price would need to rise just around 16%, as of this writing, to hit the $5 trillion mark. While its share price doesn't need to see a massive gain to get there, it's still a meaningful move. However, Nvidia has the ingredients for its stock to outperform once again in 2026.
Nvidia's performance in 2026 and beyond will largely be determined by artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure spending, both next year and into the future. Right now, that spending only continues to rise, led by cloud computing companies, which have been struggling to keep up with demand despite enormous capital expenditure (capex) budgets. Meanwhile, OpenAI, in coordination with Oracle, plans to spend a massive amount on AI infrastructure in the coming years, while other large tech companies and even governments are also spending big.
NASDAQ: NVDA
Key Data Points
At this point, megacap tech companies are trying not to get left behind in the AI race, and that is great news for Nvidia. The company's graphics processing units (GPUs) are the main chips used to power AI workloads, and the ecosystem it has built around them has given it a wide moat. This starts with its CUDA software platform, which is where most foundation AI was written on and optimized for its GPUs. Meanwhile, its proprietary NVLink interconnect system helps its chips act as one powerful unit, discouraging mixing and matching.
Nvidia's stock is also reasonably valued, trading at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of less than 24 times 2026 analyst estimates and a price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio near 0.6 times (with below 1 times considered undervalued). That gives the stock plenty of room to run next year.
Alphabet
Alphabet's (GOOGL +0.54%) (GOOG +0.54%) market cap currently checks in around $3.7 trillion, which means it has a little more work to do than Nvidia. To get to a $5 trillion market cap, the stock would have to increase by about 35%. Alphabet's stock has climbed more than 60% in 2025 as of this writing, so that type of performance isn't out of reach.
Alphabet is already the most profitable company in the world, and the stock is attractively valued, trading at a 27 times forward P/E and a PEG below 1 time for a very durable business. Getting to a $5 trillion market cap in 2026 is largely going to be about accelerating revenue growth and positioning the company as an AI leader. Alphabet helped flip the narrative that it was going to be an AI loser in 2025, and now it needs to continue to show why it is likely to be one of the biggest AI winners.
NASDAQ: GOOGL
Key Data Points
The company's cloud computing and search/AI businesses actually complement each other tremendously, which it should further demonstrate in 2026. By having both its own world-class AI chips and a foundational large language model (LLM), Alphabet has a structural cost advantage that cannot be matched. The company can train its Gemini models and run inference much more cheaply due to its custom tensor processing units (TPU).
This gives Google Cloud a margin advantage and makes it more attractive to customers, while Alphabet also embeds Gemini into its products to make them better. This just becomes a virtuous cycle that should see Alphabet gain more cost and performance advantages over time through its businesses. Expect this to become more evident in 2026, helping power the stock higher.
Throw is some additional upside next year from its expanding Waymo robotaxi business and its sizable investment in SpaceX, and Alphabet looks set to hit a $5 trillion market cap in 2026.
