Nvidia Just Put $105 Billion Behind the AI Boom: 5 Stocks to Buy

AI stocks have been shaky, and everywhere you look, someone's calling this a bubble. But, Nvidia isn't really acting like it. The company just agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion behind one of the largest AI data centers ever planned. And that spending could ripple into five different stocks, including a few I think maybe worth buying right now. Hi, I'm Jacob Wade. I'm a financial coach that helps high-income earners retire early. And if you like timely stock pick videos just like this one, hit the thumbs up button below. It lets me know to make more videos just like this one. Now, let's talk about what just happened and what it means for you as an investor. Now, Nvidia has agreed to guarantee up to $105 billion in lease obligations for a new AI data center campus in Pike County, Ohio. SB Energy, owned by SoftBank, is developing it with OpenAI signed on as a tenant for 20 years. Now, to be clear, Nvidia is not writing a $105 billion check. Just think of it as sort of co-signing a lease. Nvidia only pays if OpenAI defaults and the landlord can't replace them. So, that's a contingent risk for Nvidia shareholders, but it also shows how much confidence Nvidia has in this buildout. Now, the company is also investing $1.5 billion directly into SB Energy. The first 800 MW phase is expected online in 2028. Nvidia says this single site could generate up to $200 billion in revenue with total OpenAI related compute revenue potentially reaching $600 billion by 2030. And this project is truly enormous. 1 GW can roughly power 750,000 US homes. This campus is planned for 8 GW. So, this is now no longer just a chip story. It's a power, construction, data center, and hardware story, creating opportunities far beyond Nvidia. Now, as I promised in the introduction, I've unearthed several stocks that could benefit from this multi-billion dollar development. But first, I should also mention that our editor-in-chief discusses stock market news and his stock picks in detail during his free weekly training sessions. You can join him live every single Monday for free, but you do need to register to join. So just scan the QR code on the screen right here or go to wallstreetzen.com/live to sign up. All right, we're going to start this one off with a stock that's on the more speculative side of things, but it's worth watching as this build-out advances. That stock is Equinix, ticker symbol EQIX. Now, this company operates the data centers that house and connect AI infrastructure, putting it directly in the path of the massive capacity build-out Nvidia is betting on. Now, the problem is investors already know it. A lot of this AI excitement appears to be priced into this stock, leaving very little room for disappointments. Now, to explain what I mean, let me lead with the good here. Trailing 12-month earnings are up 52% to $1.5 billion, and earnings have outgrown both its industry and the market over the past several years. Shares are up 42% over the last year alone, and Wall Street loves this stock. 13 of the 19 analysts rate it a strong buy, but even after all that bullishness, their average price target is only about a 4% upside. So, honestly, that's my first warning sign on this stock. And our Zen rating is even more cautious on this stock. That's our 115-factor quant review, which distills these due diligence checks into an intuitive letter grade. Equinix earns a C letter grade in the system, which is equal to a hold recommendation. And if you look at the seven underlying component grades that shape that overall C grade, you can see that it is really dragged down by a D in value. The price-to-earnings ratio tops 70 and its P E G exceeds five and insiders have been net sellers over the past year. So, that's worth noting. So, this you here isn't Equinix's business, it's the price you're being asked to pay for it, to be honest. So, at this valuation, you're already paying a huge premium for growth that the market already expects. So, honestly, great company, but tough setup. If the valuation cools down or the fundamentals grow into that price, well, this could become much more interesting. So, be sure to add it to your free watch list on Wall Street Zen to see if the rating changes. Once it gets upgraded to a B or a better yet A rating, we might actually have a different conversation about Equinix. But for now, add it to the watch list and just hold. All right, the stock's going to get better and better from here. We're now onto Taiwan Semiconductor, which is ticker symbol T S M. Now, Nvidia designs the GPUs powering this AI buildout, but Taiwan Semiconductor is the company that's actually manufacturing those GPUs. So, if Nvidia is right and demand for AI compute keeps exploding, more GPUs have to get built and and Taiwan Semiconductor sits directly in the flow of all that spending. And unlike Equinix, the numbers here give me much stronger case for actually owning this stock. Now, the trailing 12-month earnings are up more than 40% to nearly $70 billion on $139 billion in revenue with margins near 50% and last year's 40.6% earnings growth also beat its own five-year average. While shares have surged nearly 80% in a year, but here's the important difference. Wall Street still sees meaningful room to run on this stock. Five of these six analysts rate Taiwan Semiconductor a buy rating or better and their average price target implies more than a 26% upside. While the current street high suggests the stock has over a 50% upside potential in just the coming year. Now, compare that with the roughly 4% upside that we were talking about at Equinix and you can see why I'm a little more interested in Taiwan Semiconductor. Now, the Zen ratings also agree here. Taiwan Semiconductor earns a B rating equal to a buy recommendation with A's in momentum and financials and B ratings in sentiment and AI. So, you've got strong financials underneath the business, strong price action behind the stock, and bullish signals that support both. Now, there is one blemish to talk about here. Over the past 5 years, earnings have grown 28.81% annually versus 58.41% for the broader semiconductor industry. So, relative to some of its red-hot peers, its longer-term growth really hasn't been exceptional. But, this is a profitable, financially strong company sitting at one of the most critical choke points in the entire AI supply chain with Wall Street still seeing substantial upside here. what makes this stock a very compelling setup compared to something like Equinix. Now, before we get to the next stock on the list, if you're getting value from this video, consider subscribing to this YouTube channel. We do this kind of grounded, data-driven research every single week, and I'd love to have you back for where the next video. All right, now we're going to move on from chips to the massive campuses that are actually being built around them. Sterling Infrastructure, ticker symbol STRL, handles the site development and infrastructure these AI data centers need, giving it a direct way to profit as the buildout accelerates. And the growth is already showing up. Trailing 12-month earnings are up more than 51% to $431.5 million and Sterling has outgrown both its industry and the broader market over the past 5 years. Analysts expect another 21% annual earnings growth going forward. And Wall Street really sees plenty of runway on this stock, too. All three analysts covering Sterling rate it as a buy or better with an average price target implying a roughly 35% upside. The max forecast is even better. It comes from Brent Thielman at Oppenheimer, who ranks in the top 2% of analysts that we track in a database of over 5,300, by the way. His target suggests the stock could see over a 70% upside from current levels as of the week that I'm recording this. And that's after the stock's already 100-plus percent run over the past year. Now, the Zen ratings agree with an overall B rating here or a buy recommendation led by an A grade in growth and B grades in sentiment and financials. Now, the one concern is that revenue is forecast to grow at a modest 11.66% annually. So, hitting those bigger earnings targets would require Sterling to really keep expanding margins. But, strong growth, bullish analysts, and robust upside potential make this another compelling way to play the AI infrastructure boom. And our final two stocks rank even higher here. By the way, the Zen ratings that I'm discussing here are updated on a daily basis. So, if any of the stocks that I'm talking about do interest you, just go ahead and visit wallstreetzen.com to see the latest data on any of them. All right, now we get to our first strong buy recommendation, Generac, ticker symbol GNRC. Now, AI data centers need enormous amounts of reliable power, and Generac provides the backup power infrastructure that keeps them running when the grid simply can't. That opportunity is already turning into business with reports pointing to a $1.6 billion data center-related backlog. And the growth could be just getting started. Analysts expect earnings to grow at an exceptional 48% annually going forward. Well, 12 of 14 analysts rate the stock a buy or better. Their average price target implies over a 30% upside potential, while the street high target sees over 60% upside potential in the coming year. Now, our Zen ratings are just as bullish. Generac earns a strong buy, our highest rating, with an A in growth and B's in sentiment, safety, and financials. That mix suggests Generac has the kind of well-rounded profile you want in a growth stock. Rapid expansion backed by solid financials, relatively dependable performance, and increasingly bullish investor sentiment. Now, there is one catch here. Earnings fell 27% over the past year and longer-term growth has lagged both the industry and the market. But, there are signs of a turnaround already underway. Q2 earnings jumped 95% from the previous quarter. So, really, you've got a growing AI data center backlog here, a major earnings rebound, 48% projected annual growth, and a strong buy rating. This is honestly where the list gets very interesting, and that brings me to the highest-rated stock in this video. But, before I dig into that, if you like stock talk like this, then I once again remind you to check out Wall Street Zen's no-cost live training sessions. You can join our editor-in-chief Steve Reitmeister on Mondays, and he doesn't just talk about what he's buying, but how he's actually finding the stocks, so you can really do the same in the days and weeks ahead. He also shares his trade of the week, combining the best of the Zen ratings with his 40-plus years of investing experience. So, again, if you like content like this, I strongly recommend just pause the video for a second and scan the QR code on the screen right here or simply go to wallstreetzen.com/live, so you can sign up for the next live session. We'll see you on Monday. All right, finally, the highest-rated stock on this list, Micron, ticker symbol MU. Now, Micron makes the high-bandwidth memory that sits alongside Nvidia's GPUs inside the AI servers. Now, without that memory feeding data to the chips fast enough, all that expensive compute gets bottlenecked. So, as Nvidia sells more GPUs into massive AI campuses like this one, Micron sits directly in the path of that demand. And its numbers are the strongest on this list. Trailing 12-month earnings are up more than 700% to $50.5 billion on $90.3 billion revenue with margins near 56%. Shares have exploded more than 700% in just the past year alone. Now, normally a run like that would make me worry that maybe we're far too late here. But signs indicate that it may actually still be undervalued. For example, its PEG sits at just 0.52, suggesting the stock still looks reasonably priced relative to its growth. For context, the average PEG is around 1 and 1/2. So, anything below 1 is considered a screaming deal, and Micron is well below that level. And Wall Street also sees substantial upside with 23 of 25 analysts rating Micron a buy or better with an average target nearly 40% above today's price. The max price target sees over 110% potential upside. And these are, again, not just randos. Several of them rank in the top 1% of all analysts in our database. Now, the Zena ratings are also just as impressive. Micron earns a strong buy recommendation backed by A's in growth, momentum, and financial. And that's a powerful combination. The business is growing rapidly. The balance sheet and the underlying financial performance is strong, and the stock's price action confirms that investors are rewarding those fundamentals. Now, the trade-off here is safety, which earns a D. And Micron operates in a historically cyclical industry, and after a 700% run, investors should expect considerably more volatility than they would from like a steady stock in a less volatile industry. But that's the profile here. Exceptional growth, strong financials, powerful momentum, and a valuation that still looks reasonable relative to that growth. Among these five stocks here, Micron earns the highest overall rating, making it my strongest pick for the AI buildout beyond Nvidia. So, let's zoom out. Here's Here's the bigger picture here. AI stocks, they can pull back, and bubble fears are definitely going to flare up, but Nvidia just put its balance sheet behind as much as a hundred and five billion dollars in lease obligations for a single AI campus. And it's 1.5 billion dollar direct investment, a potential 200 billion dollars in Nvidia revenue from that side alone, and as much as 600 billion in Open AI-related compute revenue by 2030. Nvidia clearly isn't positioning for an AI slowdown anytime soon. But, that doesn't make every AI stock a buy. But, it does tell you the infrastructure buildout is still moving forward, and some of the biggest opportunities may now sit outside of Nvidia stock itself. Now, up next, make sure you watch the Q3 earnings from these five companies. That's where we're going to start seeing whether this massive buildout is actually translating from announcements into actual business. So now, what do you you think? Is Nvidia proving the AI boom is just getting started, or taking a 105 billion dollar gamble at the top? I want to hear your thoughts on that. Drop them in the comments below, and your thoughts on any stocks I shared. And if you want to dig further into what Nvidia is actually pouring money into right now, I strongly recommend checking out this video right here about Nvidia's big investment in Intel. It's on the screen here right now.