Survey: 67% of Gen Z Are Confident in AI Returns Versus Only 50% of Boomers. Here Are 2 AI Stocks to Buy Now and Hold for Decades.

Younger investors and high-income Americans are taking a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) as a long-term investment theme. In fact, according to The Motley Fool's 2026 AI Investor Outlook Report, 67% of the Gen Z respondents highlighted their confidence in the ability of AI-powered investments to generate long-term returns, compared with just 50% of baby boomers. Overall, around 62% of respondents claimed confidence in AI's long-term return potential.

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With AI being increasingly viewed as a multidecade wealth-generating opportunity rather than just a passing trend, investors can consider holding positions in these two high-quality stocks for decades.

Microsoft

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is increasingly focusing on scaling up real-world production-grade AI deployments across Azure. Azure is the second-largest public cloud computing platform, and exited the third quarter with a 20% global market share.

In its fiscal 2026 first quarter (which ended Sept. 30), Microsoft's cloud revenues rose 26% year over year to $49.1 billion. With demand for Azure AI services exceeding available capacity, the company plans to increase its AI capacity by over 80% in fiscal 2026 and double its data center footprint within the next two years.

The company's AI-powered virtual assistant, Copilot, is being positioned as a platform rather than a stand-alone productivity feature to manage agents and workflows across Microsoft 365, GitHub, and security. The company exited its fiscal Q1 with over 900 million monthly active users for its AI features and over 150 million monthly active Copilot users.

Microsoft's total commercial remaining performance obligations (a measure of contracted backlog) rose 50% year over year to nearly $400 billion, highlighting the multiyear revenue visibility of its AI-powered services.

Against the backdrop of these AI-powered tailwinds, the stock appears a smart pick to buy and hold for the next decade, especially as it trades at a reasonable valuation of 25.2 times forward earnings.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) is an indispensable AI infrastructure player, with a nearly 72% share of the chip foundry market. The company has closely aligned its technology roadmap and capacity expansion plans to capitalize on the surging demand for AI-optimized logic and memory chips.

In the fourth quarter, TSMC commenced volume production of chips using its most advanced process node -- 2-nanometer (nm) -- with the majority of that production at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The company also plans to begin mass-producing an enhanced version of those 2nm chips that it has dubbed N2P in the second half of 2026. These cutting-edge chips, which offer higher performance and better power efficiency than its previous top-of-the-line 3nm chips, will preserve TSMC's dominance in the foundry market.

The CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) business is also proving to be a significant growth catalyst for TSMC, as AI GPUs and accelerators are increasingly requiring this advanced packaging technology to integrate logic silicon with high-bandwidth memory. Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) expects TSMC to ship roughly 1.2 million CoWoS wafers in 2026 and around 2.2 million in 2027.

Hence, the stock is a strong pick for the next decade, even though it is trading at historically high forward P/E levels.

Manali Pradhan, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Goldman Sachs Group, Microsoft, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.