Have $5,000? These 3 Stocks Could Be Bargain Buys for 2026 and Beyond

While artificial intelligence (AI) stocks have led the market higher the past few years, that doesn't mean there still aren't bargain buys to be found. If you have $5,000 to invest right now, splitting it between three attractively valued AI stocks could be a smart move. Let's look at three to consider now.

1. Nvidia

While Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been one of the market's biggest growth stories, its valuation is also still highly attractive. The stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of under 25 times next year's analyst estimates and a price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio of less than 0.7 times. Positive PEGs below 1 are typically considered undervalued.

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That's a bargain for a company that grew its revenue by 62% last quarter and has established itself as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure buildout.

With leading foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) projecting that AI chip demand will grow at a mid-40% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the new few years, Nvidia should be able to at least keep up with the industry's growth given that its graphics processing units (GPUs) are the primary chips powering AI workloads. Meanwhile, its CUDA software platform, which is where most foundational AI code was written, continues to provide a wide moat.

2. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing

Taiwan Semiconductor is another AI leader whose stock remains attractively valued despite continued strong revenue growth. Its stock trades at a forward P/E of less than 20 times analyst 2026 earnings estimates, and its PEG is well below 1 times. Meanwhile, the company grew its revenue by nearly 41% last quarter.

TSMC, as it's also known, finds itself in an enviable position as not only the leading manufacturer of advanced logic chips, but really the only foundry capable of producing chips at small node sizes at scale with few defects. Nodes refer to the density of how many transistors can fit onto a chip, and chip designers and manufacturers are continually looking to shrink node sizes to create more powerful and energy-efficient chips.

As rivals have struggled with yields, TSMC's newest 2-nanometer chips have exceeded expectations, leading it to push up the construction timeline on facilities that can manufacture 1.4nm chips (2 generations ahead). Given this, TSMC has a near monopoly in advanced chip manufacturing. As such, it is expanding capacity to meet demand while also raising prices, which should help it see strong growth well into the future.

3. Salesforce

One area of the tech sector that has struggled since AI went mainstream is software stocks. This includes Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), which now trades at a 20 times forward P/E multiple and a PEG well below 1 times.

While the company hasn't benefited from AI in the same way as infrastructure stocks, it does have a big opportunity with AI agents. This is an emerging field where AI does not just give answers to questions but goes out and performs tasks. As agentic AI advances, it could help create a virtual workforce.

One of the biggest barriers to this is that AI can sometimes hallucinate and give wrong answers, which becomes an even bigger concern with AI agents. However, it has been found that AI performs much better when it has clean, structured data from which to draw. Salesforce, meanwhile, has been building the foundation to become an organization's sole source of truth for data AI agents can act upon.

The company's strength was always breaking down data silos between departments to help give employees, especially customer service reps, a unified view, and it expanded on this with its Data 360 solution, which could also gather and organize data from third-party vendors like cloud computing providers. More recently, it acquired Informatica, which can help it reach into and extract information from legacy on-premise databases.

All this gives Salesforce the foundation to become a leading agentic AI company, which should help accelerate its growth in the years ahead.

Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Salesforce. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia, Salesforce, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.