Synthetic intelligence (AI) is accountable for including trillions of {dollars} in worth to a handful of firms over the previous couple of years. Nvidia, for instance, briefly touched a $5 trillion market cap this yr, because of its dominant place available in the market for graphics processing models (GPUs). 4 different firms sit firmly above the $2 trillion threshold as we method the brand new yr.
However three AI shares at the moment have related market caps round $1.6 trillion as of this writing, and are vying to turn into the primary new $2 trillion firm of 2026: Meta Platforms(NASDAQ: META), Tesla(NASDAQ: TSLA), and Broadcom(NASDAQ: AVGO). This is my prediction for the following firm to high the milestone, and it may come as quickly as subsequent yr.
Picture supply: Getty Photos.
Meta, Tesla, and Broadcom have all seen their inventory costs closely influenced by advances in AI this yr.
Meta inventory climbed larger early within the yr as its efforts to enhance its suggestion algorithms bore fruit. Advert income climbed larger as time spent on its apps elevated, and advertisements grew to become simpler. Nonetheless, the inventory took a step again just lately as administration shared plans to extend its AI-related spending.
Tesla’s worth is closely tied to its robotaxi service and AI improvements. The inventory acquired a lift over the summer time when it launched its robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas. Buyers added to these positive aspects on promising progress on the corporate’s next-generation AI chip for its automobiles.
Broadcom’s customized AI accelerator enterprise has gained momentum in 2025, as the corporate signed huge contracts with OpenAI and Anthropic, the latter of which is shopping for Alphabet‘s Broadcom-designed tensor processing models (TPUs). To that finish, Alphabet and Broadcom are seeing glorious progress in shifting extra developer workloads to TPUs, which provide higher vitality effectivity and price financial savings versus Nvidia’s GPUs.
Broadcom inventory took a step again after its final earnings report, as many analysts have been upset with administration’s expectation that higher AI chip gross sales would come at a decrease gross margin.
Whereas all three of those shares have a path to a $2 trillion valuation in 2026, I count on Meta Platforms to achieve the milestone first. This is why.
Even with its run charge of $200 billion in annual income, Meta remains to be rising its backside line rapidly. Adjusted earnings per share climbed 20% within the third quarter, and enhancements in AI are the rationale.
Meta has seen a rise in each advert impressions and worth per advert for eight straight quarters. That signifies that it is rising person engagement and opening new locations inside its apps for promoting whereas making advertisements simpler.
Administration attributes a shift in its suggestion algorithm to make it extra basic throughout codecs as the first purpose customers are spending extra time on its apps. Meta has seen related enhancements by making use of the identical methodology to its promoting algorithm. In different phrases, larger fashions have instantly translated into extra income.
That development ought to proceed in 2026, as Meta opens up extra alternatives for promoting, together with on Threads and WhatsApp. It may additionally start monetizing Meta AI, its generative AI chatbot. The enhancements in its algorithms during the last couple of years ought to allow it to ramp up promoting rapidly with out as a lot adverse affect on its pricing as we have seen up to now.
The larger alternative for Meta in 2026, although, often is the enlargement of its generative AI options. It is reportedly engaged on an AI agent that may handle promoting campaigns for small companies. CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly talks concerning the alternative to deal with every little thing concerned with creating, testing, and optimizing advert campaigns on its platform by way of an AI agent.
And chatbots specializing in gross sales and customer support for an organization may open the door for extra companies to push Fb and Instagram customers to begin messaging them by way of Meta’s chat apps.
With small- and medium-sized companies accounting for the majority of advertisers on Meta’s platform, these improvements have the potential to dramatically improve the quantity they’re keen to spend on advertisements. If the overhead for these purchasers is far decrease, they will improve their advert spending and scale up their companies quicker.
These efforts ought to gasoline one other yr of robust income progress. And whereas depreciation expense from the rise in AI-related capital expenditures may eat into earnings progress, Meta ought to be capable to handle continued enhancements in earnings per share with the assistance of share repurchases.
The inventory trades for simply 26 instances ahead earnings expectations, which is far decrease than Broadcom’s a number of and fewer than one-tenth the a number of Tesla inventory trades for. I count on Meta to fetch the next earnings a number of because it proves its AI spending to be effectively value it as soon as once more in 2026, pushing its valuation to $2 trillion.
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Adam Levy has positions in Alphabet and Meta Platforms. The Motley Idiot has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Idiot recommends Broadcom. The Motley Idiot has a disclosure coverage.
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