When people think of the Roaring ’20s, they picture grand parties, jazz music, glittering lights and an almost reckless confidence about the future.
It was an era filled with energy and optimism – a belief that America was on the verge of something new and transformative. But beneath the surface glamour, something far more important was taking shape. The country was in the early stages of a profound productivity shift.
Electricity spread rapidly through cities and factories. Mass production scaled. New technologies moved from novelty to necessity, and the economic impact unfolded over years, not months.
That pattern matters today.
Artificial intelligence has followed a similar path. The technology has been advancing quietly for decades, but only recently has it become visible to the broader public. Tools like ChatGPT marked a turning point – bringing AI into everyday use and igniting intense interest on Wall Street.
That early surge delivered impressive gains in a narrow group of stocks. And it left many investors with the impression that the AI opportunity has already played out.
I believe that view misses the bigger picture.
The most transformative technologies rarely deliver their greatest economic impact during their debut. The real gains tend to come later when adoption accelerates, infrastructure is built, and productivity improvements begin to show up in corporate earnings.
This is the second act of the AI Revolution.
AI is moving beyond experimentation and into execution. Companies are no longer asking if they should use AI, but how to deploy it at scale across operations, data systems, energy usage and decision-making.
That shift is why I believe the next several years – especially 2026 and beyond – could represent the heart of a new expansion. Not a speculative frenzy, but a productivity-driven cycle where efficiency improves, margins expand, and the companies enabling this transition are rewarded.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a breakthrough story. It’s becoming economic infrastructure.
In the sections that follow, I’ll explain why this transition matters and outline five stocks I believe are well positioned for the next leg of the AI-driven expansion.
Why This Looks Like a Real Expansion – Not a Passing AI Fad
Skepticism is understandable.
Markets have already rewarded early AI winners, and history is full of examples where excitement arrived long before lasting economic value followed. After a powerful run, it’s reasonable to ask whether artificial intelligence is simply another story that has moved too far, too fast.
But the evidence increasingly suggests something different.
One of the clearest signals is where growth is coming from. Unlike speculative cycles driven mainly by expanding valuations, today’s AI-driven gains are being supported by rising earnings and improving productivity. Companies are deploying AI to cut costs, streamline workflows and make better decisions at scale – not to generate buzz, but to improve real-world results.
That distinction matters.
It’s also why a growing number of respected market strategists are reaching similar conclusions about the road ahead.
My favorite economist Ed Yardeni, whose research has guided investors for decades, has argued that the U.S. economy may be entering a modern-day version of the “Roaring ’20s.” In his view, the driving force is not stimulus or speculation, but a productivity boom powered by digital technology and artificial intelligence.
Yardeni points to several trends that support this outlook. Consumer spending has remained resilient. Business investment tied to data, automation and infrastructure continues to grow. And even as hiring has slowed, output has continued to rise – an early sign that productivity gains are beginning to take hold.
Importantly, Yardeni believes this is not a short-term rebound. He has reiterated that his “Roaring ’20s” scenario remains his base case for 2026 and beyond, with earnings growth providing the foundation for further market gains.
That perspective aligns closely with what we’re seeing across corporate America.
Companies are spending heavily to build the systems, storage and energy capacity required to support AI at scale. Capital is flowing toward the bottlenecks that determine whether this technology can be deployed efficiently and profitably. And despite persistent macro headlines – from inflation to geopolitics – the underlying engine of productivity continues to run.
Of course, no expansion is guaranteed. Yardeni himself has acknowledged risks, including inflationary pressures, market concentration and policy uncertainty. But history suggests that when productivity cycles gain momentum, they tend to overpower short-term disruptions.
For investors, the takeaway is straightforward.
This is not about chasing yesterday’s AI headlines. It’s about identifying the companies positioned at the center of this productivity shift. The businesses that enable AI to scale, store data, power infrastructure and operate efficiently across the economy.
Those are the companies most likely to benefit as the Roaring 2026s take shape.
5 Stocks to Buy Now
With that backdrop in mind, let’s take a closer look at five stocks I believe are well positioned for the next phase of the AI-driven expansion…
Stock No. 1: Helping the Average Investor
Every major economic expansion has its financial platforms.
As productivity improves and markets grow more dynamic, participation tends to broaden. Capital moves faster. Trading volumes rise. And the companies that make markets more accessible often benefit disproportionately from that increased activity.
That dynamic is beginning to take shape again – and Robinhood Markets Inc. (HOOD) is positioned at the center of it.
Robinhood was founded with a simple goal: lowering the barriers to market participation. By eliminating commissions and simplifying access to stocks, ETFs, options and other assets, the company helped expand retail investor involvement at a time when technology was already reshaping how people interact with financial markets.
Today, Robinhood is evolving beyond a basic trading app.
The company is increasingly incorporating artificial intelligence and automation to enhance the user experience, personalize insights, and streamline decision-making for individual investors. In July 2024, Robinhood acquired Pluto, an AI-driven research platform designed to deliver customized analysis and trading strategies – a move that reflects how financial services are adapting to the AI era.
AI matters here because markets are becoming more complex, faster-moving and data-intensive. Platforms that can help investors process information, manage risk and act efficiently stand to benefit as trading activity accelerates.
Robinhood also has growing exposure to digital assets, which continue to attract investor interest as part of the broader evolution of financial infrastructure. While crypto remains volatile, trading volume – not price direction – is what ultimately drives platform revenue.
For 2026, analysts are expecting Robinhood to post $5.35 billion in revenue, up 18% from $4.51 billion in the previous year. Earnings are expected to rise slightly to $2.36 per share compared to $2.01 in the previous year.
Stock No. 2: The AI Powerhouse
For any The Lord of the Rings fans, the name of this next company may feel familiar…
It is named after the palantíri (also known as the seven seeing stones), magical artifacts that allow characters to glimpse distant events. It’s a fitting metaphor for a company whose mission is to uncover hidden insight from extensive amounts of data.
Source: Nerdist
The company I’m talking about is Palantir Technologies, Inc. (PLTR).
Palantir is a big data analytics company that’s at the center of the AI Revolution.
In fact, it was founded in 2004 to develop technologies specializing in data analysis. Specifically, the company has built platforms that integrate, manage and secure data – and then it layers applications on top of these platforms for human-driven, machine-assisted analysis.
The U.S. government has been a big customer, as Palantir’s data-analysis tech is perfect for intelligence gathering, counterterrorism efforts and military purposes.
Now, it’s important to understand that Palantir is far from a one-trick pony. The company has four main platforms…
- Artificial Intelligence Platform, or AIP, is Palantir’s most well-known platform. Simply put, the platform enables its clients to develop and deploy AI-powered applications that combine large language models (LLMS) with advanced AI functionality in their private networks.
- Foundry establishes a central operating system for organizations to combine and analyze data in one place.
- Gotham is a software platform that uncovers patterns in datasets and helps users respond in real time to threats identified on the platform.
- And the Apollo platform streamlines software operations, connecting AI, data analytics and deployment – all in one system. The Apollo platform is also used to deploy Gotham and Foundry.
Looking forward to fiscal year 2026, analysts expect Palantir to post total revenue of roughly $6.31 billion, compared to $4.41 billion in 2025 – a growth rate of 43%. Full-year earnings are expected to grow roughly 42%, to $1.01 per share, compared with $0.72 in 2025.
Stock No. 3: The Storage Dynamo Behind Modern Compute
One of the vital components of the AI Revolution and data center boom is storage.
The reality is that the training and deployment of AI models require high-speed data, as well as memory and storage technologies that strike a balance between cost, performance and scalability. As a result, the majority of AI data ultimately ends up stored on hard drives.
In fact, the biggest hyperscale and cloud data centers around the world store about 90% of their AI data on hard drives. Simply put, hard drives are six times more efficient than solid-state drives (SSDs) and use four times less operating power per terabyte than SSDs. Hard drives are also nine times more efficient than NAND.
As a result, hard drives have become the backbone of AI data storage – and there is one company that develops AI-capable hard drives better than any other company: Seagate Technology Holdings plc (STX).
Data – audio, images and video – are being created at incredible speeds, and Seagate was founded more than 45 years ago to harness and maximize data’s potential. The company is a global leader in storage, as Seagate Technology has provided more than 4 zettabytes of capacity, covering the cloud, the edge and endpoint devices.
Seagate offers a range of products, including external and internal hard drives, external and internal SSDs, enterprise hard drives and SSDs, data storage systems and enterprise storage systems.
The company’s Moziac hard drive implements HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording) to provide mass-capacity storage at areal densities of three terabytes per disk and beyond. In other words, data centers equipped with Moziac hard drives can store more data in the same space, making them more efficient than ever.
It’s not too surprising, then, that Moziac HAMR products are qualified with five of the world’s largest cloud customers. So, Seagate’s hard drives remain in top demand – and about 80% of the company’s sales are related to these five companies.
For 2026, analysts expect Seagate to post $12.61 billion in revenue, up about 15% from $10.99 billion in the previous year. Earnings are expected to rise slightly to $14.76 per share compared to $11.40 in the previous year.
Stock No. 4: Power Solutions for the AI Revolution
Today’s explosion in data creation is staggering, and AI is a major driver of this trend. According to current projections, the world will generate an estimated 181 zettabytes of data in 2025, up sharply from roughly 120 zettabytes just a few years ago as digital activity, cloud services, IoT devices, and AI-enabled systems proliferate.
That amounts to more than 400 million terabytes of new data every single day – data that must be stored, processed, analyzed and served in real time across an expanding network of applications.
The fact of the matter is that as AI learns and becomes more powerful, we need more data centers. And we need more powerful and efficient ones, too.
Vertiv Holdings Inc. (VRT) is a leader in power and thermal management for data centers.
In 1965, Ralph Liebert built a prototype computer room air conditioning (CRAC) system in his Columbus, Ohio, garage. He brought it to Chicago, where he demonstrated it at IBM. Executives there were so impressed that they arranged to have the CRAC unit debuted at the World Computer Conference later that year.
The conference was a success. Liebert’s company would soon move into a 150,000-square-foot facility in Ohio to keep up with demand and would go public in 1981. Six years later, Emerson Electric acquired the firm for $430 million, or $1.2 billion in today’s dollars.
Then, in 2016, Emerson Electric spun out this lucrative business for $4 billion and rebranded the entity to what we know it as today: Vertiv Holdings.
Currently, Vertiv is a global leader in not just the cooling of data centers, but also power management products, switchgear rack systems and management systems for monitoring and controlling digital infrastructure. In other words, the company offers the entire suite of critical digital infrastructure technologies required to build and run data centers.
Business has been swift for this global leader. In 2023, the company’s backlog grew 16% to $5.5 billion – enough to sustain a full year of production. Its lucrative service revenues have also grown, though at a slower 7.6% rate.
Simply put, Vertiv has become an essential, global player in keeping data centers running. The company employs more than 3,500 field service engineers spread across 200 service centers worldwide, and this network allows the company to quickly respond to emergencies and reduce downtime.
It also boasts a first-time fix rate of more than 80% during site emergency visits. These services are essential, because a typical failure at an enterprise data center costs more than $5 million. (One notable two-hour outage at Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) in 2024 reportedly cost the firm $100 million in sales!) According to Vertiv, almost half of these outages are caused by power failures or faulty cooling systems.
Vertiv also continues to build out the tools needed for the next AI Revolution.
Since 2018, the firm has made roughly five separate billion-dollar acquisitions spanning air handling systems to electrical switchgear. In December 2023, the firm acquired CoolTerra, an existing partner that provides coolant distribution for data centers. That’s putting Vertiv on an incredibly fast growth track.
For the current fiscal year, analysts expect earnings of $5.28 per share on revenue of $12.33 billion, up 28% from earnings of $4.13 per share and 20% from revenue of $10.23 billion in fiscal 2025.
Stock No. 5: The Stabilizer in an AI-Driven Expansion
Gold has been considered money for more than 2,000 years. It is divisible, durable and scarce. These qualities have always mattered, but they matter even more in an era defined by massive technological investment.
The AI Revolution is not a lightweight software trend. It is a capital-intensive buildout that requires enormous spending on data centers, power generation, energy storage and critical infrastructure. That spending is already accelerating – and it is being financed with rising debt, expanding balance sheets and aggressive capital deployment.
Historically, periods of heavy investment and rapid technological change tend to increase volatility. That’s why gold has consistently played a stabilizing role during major economic transitions.
We’ve seen this dynamic before. During the 2007–2009 financial crisis, the S&P 500 fell more than 50% while gold gained nearly 28%. During the pandemic-driven shock of 2020, gold surged to record highs as governments flooded the system with liquidity.
Today, similar forces are at work. Global debt levels continue to climb. Central banks are rebuilding gold reserves. And governments around the world are quietly reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar – even as they fund large-scale technology and infrastructure initiatives tied to AI.
When gold prices rise, gold miners often deliver amplified gains.
Mining companies have largely fixed operating costs. As a result, each incremental increase in the price of gold flows disproportionately into profits. That operating leverage means select miners can outperform the metal itself by multiples during sustained upcycles.
Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. (AEM) stands out in this environment.
The company is one of the world’s premier gold producers, with annual production exceeding 3 million ounces and a diversified asset base across Canada, Australia, Finland and Mexico. Its acquisition of Yamana’s Canadian assets consolidated ownership of the massive Malartic mine, one of the most productive gold operations in North America.
In 2024, Agnico posted record production of approximately 3.5 million ounces and reported reserves of more than 54 million ounces. Earnings surged alongside higher gold prices, highlighting the company’s leverage to the metal.
The Opportunity Ahead
History shows that the most powerful expansions aren’t obvious in the moment – they reveal themselves over time.
As the next act of the AI revolution unfolds, the foundations of the Roaring 2026s are already being laid. And the five stocks highlighted here represent key building blocks of that emerging cycle.
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