The market produced many artificial intelligence (AI) stock winners in 2025, as the S&P 500 index soared to new heights. However, it has been a different story in 2026, with many of these stocks stumbling through the first quarter of the year.
While not every AI stock that outperformed in 2025 deserved to, the reverse is true this year, in that not every stock that has fallen has done so for good reason. And that is where the big opportunity lies.
With the onset of the war with Iran and fears of peak AI infrastructure spending, the market has rotated out of growth stocks and into value stocks. However, as the market has shown over the past two decades, top technology growth stocks are where you want to be invested for the long term.
Let's look at two AI stocks that outperformed in 2025 that look like buys on this 2026 pullback.
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1. Palantir: The AI operating system
Palantir Technologies (PLTR 6.24%) has been one of the best-performing tech stocks of the past three years, and that continued with a 135% gain in 2025. However, the stock has cooled off to start 2026, with its shares trading down nearly 18% in the first quarter.
The stock's weak performance this year can be attributed to its high valuation and it getting caught up in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) sell-off. However, the company has proven to be one of the biggest winners in AI, with its revenue growth accelerating for 10 straight quarters, culminating in 70% sales growth last quarter.
Key Data Points
Meanwhile, nothing has changed with the Palantir story. The company's Foundry AI platform is a critical component in making AI more useful for businesses. It essentially acts as an AI operating system, helping gather and cleanse an organization's data and linking it to real-world assets and processes to significantly reduce hallucinations and make AI more useful and actionable. Its platform can be implemented across a wide range of industries for various use cases, which just gives it a huge runway of growth ahead.
At the same time, Palantir's government business remains strong, and the company has demonstrated the power of its technology during the current conflict with Iran. Its Maven Smart System is now viewed as the central nervous system of the U.S. military.
While still not cheap, the stock is becoming more reasonably valued and has the potential to grow into one of the world's largest companies with a highly valuable platform and no real competitors at the moment.
2. Broadcom: The custom chip leader
Broadcom (AVGO +4.93%) had a strong 2025, with its stock up 49% on excitement over its opportunity in custom AI chips. 2026 hasn't started nearly as well, with the stock falling 10% in the first quarter, as investors began worrying about AI data center infrastructure spending peaking.
However, Broadcom's opportunity hasn't changed. Developing custom chips is a costly and time-consuming process, so when customers sign up to work with the company in co-developing these chips, it's typically for huge projects with multiple generations of chips planned. With customers locked in, Broadcom is projecting $100 billion in custom AI chip sales alone in its fiscal 2027, which is massive growth. This business also feeds directly into its data center networking business, which is also growing rapidly.
Key Data Points
One of the worries with Broadcom has been that its custom chip business will come with lower gross margins, especially for any outside orders associated with Alphabet's tensor processing units (TPUs). However, the company directly refuted this earlier this year, saying its AI hardware margins will remain unchanged as this business scales, removing one of the biggest arguments against the stock.
Broadcom is one of the best large-cap growth stories in the market, and the sell-off to start the year is a great buying opportunity.
