Should I invest in GPUs or CPUs?

Both GPUs and CPUs are necessary components of any PC or server, although the demand for GPUs is especially strong as companies adopt AI technology.

What is the biggest GPU company?

Nvidia is the largest GPU manufacturer by market cap. The company was valued at more than $4.5 trillion in early 2026.

Which GPU company is best?

Nvidia appears to be benefiting the most from the sky-high demand for GPUs capable of running AI workloads.

What if you invested $10,000 in Nvidia 10 years ago?

Nvidia has delivered a total return of more than 26,800% over the last 10 years. That means that if you invested $10,000 in Nvidia stock a decade ago and held on to your position, it would now be worth roughly $2.7 million.

Can I invest in GPU stocks through ETFs?

Investors can gain exposure to GPU stocks by investing in ETFs. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF provides concentrated exposure to the chip industry, but there are many other ETFs that include GPU stocks.

Best GPU Stocks for 2026 and How to Invest

5 Best GPU Stocks for 2026 and How to Invest

By Keith Noonan – Updated Jun 25, 2026 at 1:45 PM EST | Fact-checked by Parker Hicks

Key Points

GPUs are essential for AI, making related stocks like Nvidia and AMD prime investment targets.
Nvidia dominates the AI GPU market, driving significant revenue and market cap growth.
Investing in GPU companies offers exposure to the expanding AI and gaming sectors.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere, and GPU stocks are a great way to invest in the transformative technology. GPUs, or graphics processing units, were introduced decades ago to handle the computationally intensive task of putting graphics on a computer screen. The math necessary to calculate the color of millions of pixels can quickly overwhelm a central processing unit. GPUs are designed to do these calculations in parallel, using hardware designed for the task.

The number crunching that must be done to train and use AI models can also be accelerated with GPUs. While gaming remains a key growth driver for the industry, AI may end up being more important in the long run.

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Five top GPU stocks for 2026

GPU companies design semiconductor chips that feature a large number of cores capable of chewing through certain types of computational workloads. Personal computers, smartphones, gaming consoles, and anything that displays images on a screen ultimately have a GPU working behind the scenes. If you're looking to invest in GPUs, Nvidia (NVDA +3.47%) , AMD (AMD +1.38%), Intel (INTC -2.42%) , Arm Holdings (ARM -0.56%) , and Qualcomm (QCOM -1.21%) are top stocks in the category.

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Ticker Information Table
Name and ticker	Market capMarket cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded shares. Implied market cap may vary.	Current price
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)	$4.9 trillion	$209.77
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD)	$891.5 billion	$554.26
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)	$565.6 billion	$109.82
Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM)	$348.9 billion	$326.05
Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM)	$201.4 billion	$188.93

Data as of Jul 10, 2026. Showing 5 of 5 total entries.

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1. Nvidia

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NASDAQ: NVDA

Nvidia

Today's Change

(3.45%) $6.99

Current Price

$209.77

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$4.9T

Day's Range

$201.91 - $210.55

52wk Range

$162.02 - $236.54

Volume

3.4M

Avg Vol

159.1M

Gross Margin

74.15%

Dividend Yield

0.14%

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NASDAQ: AMD

Advanced Micro Devices

Today's Change

(1.38%) $7.54

Current Price

$554.26

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$891B

Day's Range

$540.26 - $556.22

52wk Range

$141.60 - $584.73

Volume

306.1K

Avg Vol

36.7M

Gross Margin

47.09%

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AMD is aiming to catch up to Nvidia in the AI GPU market, but it will be a long road ahead. The company unveiled its MI350 GPU in June, which features a whopping 288 gigabytes of high-bandwidth memory and AMD's latest graphics architecture. The chip is squarely aimed at generative AI workloads, like training powerful large language models. Unfortunately for AMD, Nvidia has a years-long head start building a software ecosystem around its AI GPUs.

Even with AMD playing the role of perpetual second fiddle to Nvidia in the GPU market, demand for AI chips may be strong enough to fuel solid growth in AMD's data center GPU business.

AMD is also the No. 2 player in the discrete graphics card market for gaming and other applications. The company is competitive with Nvidia in the low-end and mid-range portions of the gaming graphics card market, but the company has difficulty competing at high price points.

Outside of PC graphics cards, AMD's semi-custom chips power both the PlayStation 5 and the latest Xbox game consoles. In each case, AMD pairs its CPU cores with a powerful GPU on a single chip. While AMD’s PC-centric business has struggled amid relatively soft computer demand, the semi-custom business fared much better.

3. Intel

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NASDAQ: INTC

Intel

Today's Change

(-2.42%) $-2.72

Current Price

$109.82

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$566B

Day's Range

$107.46 - $110.00

52wk Range

$18.96 - $142.35

Volume

2.2M

Avg Vol

134.7M

Gross Margin

35.90%

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While Intel is best known as a designer and manufacturer of central processing units (CPUs), the company also offers GPUs for AI and other data center applications. The Gaudi3 AI accelerator is its current top-of-the-line processor for data centers, and the company is readying new entries that could help it gain market share in the category.

Unfortunately, Intel faces the same challenge as AMD in the AI GPU market: Nvidia's hardware and software have become de facto standards due to significant performance advantages. While it seems unlikely that the company will be able to deliver GPUs capable of matching Nvidia's top-of-the-line offerings any time soon, shares could soar if Intel makes meaningful progress on that front and benefits from overall demand in the space.

The semiconductor giant also has a second way to tap into the booming demand for GPUs. The company is investing tens of billions of dollars in building out its own foundry business that will manufacture advanced chips for customers. As Intel rapidly brings new process nodes to volume production, Nvidia and AMD may eventually see Intel as a viable manufacturing partner for their own GPUs, and the company's fabrication contract wins with Alphabet (GOOGL -0.86%)(GOOG -0.69%) and Elon Musk's Terafab project suggest the company's foundry unit is finally poised for big growth.

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4. Arm Holdings

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NASDAQ: ARM

Arm Holdings

Today's Change

(-0.56%) $-1.82

Current Price

$326.05

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$349B

Day's Range

$317.58 - $327.60

52wk Range

$100.02 - $452.70

Volume

43.4K

Avg Vol

11.1M

Gross Margin

94.08%

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Arm Holdings is a semiconductor company that generates most of its revenue by licensing architecture designs that other companies use to build on and design their own chips. While the semiconductor specialist's business primarily focuses on architecture for CPUs, it also has a presence in the GPU category.

Arm's Mali and Immortalis GPUs may not measure up to the high-powered performance of processors used in data centers or even high-end gaming processors, but they have found adoption in mobile devices, smart TVs, and other consumer hardware. Rather than being built off the company's architecture by third parties, these processors are designed directly by Arm -- and the company is reportedly interested in designing more of its own chips.

Notably, Arm is rumored to be working on high-performance GPUs that can challenge Nvidia and Intel in the gaming processor market. If the company were to find success in the gaming space, it's possible it could ready a chip to compete in the data center market -- which is currently the holy grail in the GPU industry, thanks to the importance of AI.

5. Qualcomm

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NASDAQ: QCOM

Qualcomm

Today's Change

(-1.14%) $-2.18

Current Price

$188.93

Key Data Points

Market Cap

$201B

Day's Range

$185.90 - $189.44

52wk Range

$121.99 - $259.92

Volume

145.2K

Avg Vol

23.2M

Gross Margin

54.80%

Dividend Yield

1.88%

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Qualcomm is a tech company that specializes in processors, connectivity chips, and other semiconductors for mobile devices and other consumer hardware. The company's chip designs are found in most modern smartphones and tablets, and its Adreno GPUs are a key part of the Snapdragon processors that are central to phones using the Android operating system.

Qualcomm has built its business on delivering high-performance, low-power-consumption chips and is also making a push to improve the adoption of its Snapdragon processors in the PC hardware market. As demand for AI-focused hardware in the consumer market continues to ramp up, the chip specialist will likely continue to tailor its Adreno GPUs to support artificial intelligence technologies.

In addition to its focus on the consumer market, Qualcomm is also launching CPUs for data center customers that have been designed to easily interface with Nvidia's GPUs. So, while Qualcomm doesn't have a competitive GPU for the high-end data center market, it may still benefit from demand and adoption trends in the space.

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How to buy GPU stocks

Open your brokerage account: Log in to your brokerage account where you handle your investments. If you don't have one yet, take a look at our favorite brokers and trading platforms to find the right one for you.
Search for the stock: Enter the ticker into the search bar to bring up the stock's trading page.
Decide how many shares to buy: Consider your investment goals and how much of your portfolio you want to allocate to this stock.
Select order type: Choose between a market order to buy at the current price or a limit order to specify the maximum price you're willing to pay.
Submit your order: Confirm the details and submit your buy order.
Review your purchase: Check your portfolio to ensure your order was filled as expected and adjust your investment strategy accordingly.

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Benefits and risks of investing in GPU stocks

The future outlook for the GPU industry is currently very strong, with Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta alone projected to spend roughly $700 billion in 2026 to advance their AI infrastructure build-outs -- and a large portion of this spending will be focused on purchasing new GPUs.
GPUs are the foundation-level hardware powering the AI revolution, and it's likely that capital expenditures connected to artificial intelligence will see another big jump in 2027.
While GPU stocks may experience periods of volatility or valuation rerating from the market, the industry has a robust demand outlook.
The demand outlook for AI GPUs is promising, but many leading semiconductor companies with exposure to the space already trade at valuation levels that price in strong growth.
If leading tech players pull back on their investments in GPUs for AI purposes, stocks in the category could see significant downward re-ratings.

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Should you invest in GPU stocks?

The AI revolution is already driving demand for the most advanced GPUs into the stratosphere, and it appears that this demand is here to stay. One thing to be aware of, though, is that GPUs aren’t the only option for accelerating AI workloads. Specialized chips known as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are built at the hardware level for a specific set of tasks, and they can provide significant performance and efficiency gains over more general GPUs.

Despite this threat, GPUs have become the standard way to train and run AI models, and that’s unlikely to change overnight. There are many ways to invest in AI, but for investors looking for a "pick-and-shovel" option, GPU stocks are a good bet.

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FAQ

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GPU investments FAQ

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About the Author

Keith Noonan is a contributing writer at The Motley Fool covering technology, consumer goods, and other sectors. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Boston College.

TMFNoons

Keith Noonan has positions in Intel. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Arm Holdings, Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

5 Best GPU Stocks for 2026 and How to Invest

Key Points

Five top GPU stocks for 2026

1. Nvidia

Key Data Points

Key Data Points

3. Intel

Key Data Points

4. Arm Holdings

Key Data Points

5. Qualcomm

Key Data Points

How to buy GPU stocks

Benefits and risks of investing in GPU stocks

Should you invest in GPU stocks?

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FAQ

GPU investments FAQ

About the Author

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GPU investments FAQ

Should I invest in GPUs or CPUs?

What is the biggest GPU company?

Which GPU company is best?

What if you invested $10,000 in Nvidia 10 years ago?

Can I invest in GPU stocks through ETFs?

1. Nvidia

2. Advanced Micro Devices

3. Intel

4. Arm Holdings

5. Qualcomm

How to buy GPU stocks

Benefits and risks of investing in GPU stocks

Should you invest in GPU stocks?

Related investing topics

FAQ

Key Data Points

Key Data Points

Key Data Points

Key Data Points

Key Data Points

Five top GPU stocks for 2026