3 Brilliant Growth Stocks to Buy Now and Hold for the Long Term

Key Points

• As much as tech companies try to wean themselves from it, they still need TSMC.

• Its shares are expensive, but Microsoft's efforts in several areas merit the premium.

• AI has boosted the obvious stocks. Now it’s time to look at less-obvious beneficiaries.

• 10 stocks we like better than Microsoft ›

Does the idea of adding some new names to your portfolio at this time have you a little stressed out? It would certainly be understandable if it did. This is a tricky time to navigate the market. The Federal Reserve may or may not lower interest rates soon. New tariffs may or may not remain in place. Home prices may or may not come back to Earth. All of it impacts equities one way or another.

The thing is, in times like these it's important to look past the short-term details that don't really matter and refocus on the bigger picture. The quality and enduring marketability of a company's product, for instance, largely determines how that organization's stock performs in the long run.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

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With that as the backdrop, here's a closer look at three brilliant long-term growth stocks you can add to your portfolio today even if it means paying a bit of a premium for them. They're worth it.

1. Taiwan Semiconductor

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) isn't a household name here in the United States. It's a pretty safe bet, however, that you or someone living in your household regularly uses something it made.

See, TSMC (as it's often called) manufactures semiconductors, microchips, and even computer processors on behalf of several of the biggest names in the business. Nvidia, Intel, and Apple are just some of this company's chip customers. As it turns out, it's often easier and even cheaper to punt this sort of foundry work to a specialist with the know-how and equipment necessary to make silicon according to your specifications.

That's why this company makes about two-thirds of the world's microchips, and an even greater proportion of the high-performance semiconductors you'll usually find within artificial intelligence platforms.

That doesn't mean some of the biggest names in the semiconductor business aren't attempting to wean themselves off their reliance on third-party manufacturers. Intel, for instance, has committed billions of dollars to building its own foundries in and outside of the United States. It's not going particularly well, though. It's proving complicated, and expensive.

In retrospect, partnerships like the one Apple has entered into with Taiwan Semiconductor to purchase chips made at its production facility in Arizona just make more fiscal sense for most chip companies. That's not apt to change anytime soon either, if ever. Taiwan Semiconductor is simply too good and too efficient at what it does to lose out to efforts from the industry's best-known brands to establish their own foundries.

And the opportunity remains enormous. Thanks to the advent of AI and its proliferation out of the data center and into all corners of your home, Precedence Research believes the global semiconductor industry is poised to grow from less than $600 billion last year to more than $1.2 trillion by 2034.

For its part, analysts expect Taiwan Semiconductor to grow its top line from less than $3 billion last year to more than $5 billion in 2027. That's just a taste of what awaits further down the road, though.

2. Microsoft

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) shares aren't cheap. Indeed, they're almost uncomfortably expensive, priced at more than 30 times this year's expected earnings, and 28 times next year's estimate of $18.11 per share. But sometimes you have to pay up for quality. It's usually worth the price.

You know the company. Microsoft is of course the king of computer software, with some version of its Windows operating system installed on more than 70% of the world's desktops and laptops, according to numbers from Statcounter. It's not quite the powerhouse it originally was on the productivity software front, with the entry of Google Docs into the race. It's still a key player in this arena though.

And, while not nearly as big as Amazon's cloud business, Microsoft's Azure is an increasingly popular cloud computing platform, leading this arm to 25% growth during the recently ended fiscal Q4.

None of these quantitative factors are the chief reason you'd want to own Microsoft for the long haul, however. The strongest argument for stepping into a stake in Microsoft at this time is far more qualitative. That is, it's a well-established brand name that's well-entrenched within the landscape of personal computers. If for no other reason than it just being too much trouble to switch to other kinds of computing and productivity platforms, Microsoft is here to stay, and thrive.

The kicker: Over the course of the past several years Microsoft's business model has evolved away from one-time purchases of software, and toward "renting" always-updated software at a monthly cost that's almost negligible. Not only is this recurring revenue more predictable, this revenue doesn't need to be "won" over and over again. Most of these customers are content to simply stick with the system or software they know.

That's not apt to change anytime in the near or distant future either. The world's just too busy tackling more pressing problems to worry about shopping around for alternative solutions.

3. Broadcom

Finally, you probably know that Nvidia's processors are the heart and soul of most artificial intelligence data centers, where you'll find stacks of servers assembled by Super Micro Computer inside buildings built by Applied Digital. But, have you ever thought about who makes the technology that interconnects all of these individual motherboards into a single unified AI system?

It's Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO). OK, Broadcom isn't the only name in the business. It's the biggest and arguably the best, though. Take its recently unveiled Jericho4 ethernet fabric router as an example. It's a "purpose-built platform for the next generation of distributed AI infrastructure" capable of connecting over one million processors to one another and delivering digital data between these processors at a speed of up to 3.2 terabytes per second.

And earlier this year, the company introduced a digital signal processor chip with the ability to handle an industry-leading 200 gigabytes' worth of digital data per lane. This may not mean much to the average investor who isn't familiar with exactly how data centers function. So, to put it in layman's terms, it means Broadcom's tech adds massive capacity and blazing fast speed to AI's underlying architecture, making artificial intelligence platforms even more powerful.

And here's something every investor will certainly understand. Late last year Broadcom's CEO Hock Tan suggested the artificial intelligence hardware market could be worth between $60 billion and $90 billion as soon at 2027, versus the company's 2024 AI revenue of only $12.2 billion. Now, AI isn't all Broadcom does -- it only accounted for less than half the company's 2024 top line of $30.1 billion, in fact.

But in light of Global Market Insights' belief that the global AI hardware market is going to grow at an average annualized pace of 18% through 2034 -- paired with Broadcom's current leadership of its sliver of this space -- this stock's modest pullback since early August may be all the discount you're going to get here.

Should you invest $1,000 in Microsoft right now?

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James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel, and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.