Top AI Stocks to Add to Your Portfolio for Impressive Returns

An updated edition of the May 20, 2025 article.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is harnessing digital transformation by enabling machines to analyze data, recognize patterns and make decisions. Accelerating advancements like generative AI (Gen AI) and Agentic AI, multimodal learning, and improved hardware (GPUs/TPUs) are driving innovation in healthcare, finance, robotics, and more. AI is revolutionizing industries such as robotics, healthcare, finance, cybersecurity and e-commerce with its ability to mimic human intelligence through machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing. AI now powers chatbots, diagnostics, fraud detection, and autonomous systems, boosting agility while simultaneously improving efficiency. 

Per IDC, global spending on AI, including AI-enabled applications, infrastructure, and related IT and business services, will more than double by 2028 to hit $632 billion, seeing a CAGR of 29% between 2024 and 2028. AI deployment is accelerating as U.S. tech giants are spending massively, including Microsoft’s MSFT $80 billion and Meta Platforms’ META $64-$72 billion. Per Gartner, global Gen AI spending is expected to hit $644 billion in 2025, indicating 76.4% growth over 2024, driven by growing demand for AI products, including hardware, such as servers, smartphones and PCs. This offers a significant growth opportunity for AI infrastructure providers like Dell Technologies DELL.

Enterprises are rapidly infusing AI and Gen AI into their applications to solve complex issues. Alphabet GOOGL is infusing AI into its search business in order to attract more users, thereby driving ad revenue growth. U.S. tech giants, including Microsoft, Adobe ADBE, Google and Meta Platforms, have been at the forefront of bringing remarkable advances to the AI technology, well supported by powerful AI chips from NVIDIA NVDA. 

We believe that the rapid deployment of AI technology and huge spending on its development efforts offer significant growth opportunities for investors. Our Artificial Intelligence Screen is an invaluable source for identifying AI stocks with massive growth prospects.

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3 AI Stocks to Buy Right Now

Dell, through its APEX platform, provides multi-cloud solutions and advanced AI infrastructure, which have become key highlights of its offerings. Dell APEX is 60% faster in deploying new capacity and promises a 64% reduction in unplanned outages per year. The solution reduces the cost of operations by 39%.

Dell’s AI prospects are strong as deployment expands from major cloud service providers to large-scale enterprises and edge computing with PCs. This Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company is benefiting from the strong demand for AI servers, which are driven by ongoing digital transformation and heightened interest in Gen AI applications. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Expanding the portfolio is a key catalyst. In May 2025, Dell announced major advancements across the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA to accelerate enterprise AI adoption. These include next-generation PowerEdge servers, enhanced AI data platforms, integrated software solutions, and new managed services for streamlined AI deployment. Dell’s PowerEdge XE9680L AI-optimized server is in high demand, driving prospects.

Although Adobe’s AI business is minuscule compared with the likes of Microsoft and Alphabet, this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company is catching up fast through the expansion of its AI portfolio with GenStudio and Firefly Services. Adobe’s AI book of business from AI-first products, including Acrobat AI assistant, Firefly App and Services and GenStudio for Performance Marketing, is tracking ahead of the $250 million ending Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) target by the end of fiscal 2025. 

Adobe’s tools, like Acrobat AI Assistant and Adobe Express, are attracting business professionals and creators. Acrobat AI Assistant uses conversational interfaces to make it easier for users to read digital documents and gain insights within a short timeframe. Adobe Express is using AI to enable consumers to quickly design and publish content through conversational AI in an easy-to-use, all-in-one application. Adobe is integrating these solutions to facilitate a smoother creation-to-consumption process across mobile apps, web browsers and desktop offerings. Adobe’s monthly active users across these categories surpassed more than 700 million users at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2025. 

Adobe’s Firefly App is attracting users for AI-powered content ideation, creation and production, and its support for third-party models, including from Google’s Imagen and Veo, OpenAI’s image generation and Black Forest Labs’ Flux, is a key catalyst. 

Microsoft is benefiting from its strategy of infusing AI into its applications. The company has more than 60,000 Azure AI customers. The Azure AI Foundry application and agent development hub has now been adopted by developers at more than 70,000 enterprises and digital-native companies. This Zacks Rank #2 company’s Azure AI Agent Service has been utilized by more than 10,000 organizations to build, deploy and scale agents. 

Microsoft’s introduction of the MU language model, which now powers the new AI agent in Windows 11 Settings, is noteworthy. The agent allows users to interact with system settings using natural language. The launch of the MU model and its integration into Windows is expected to increase usage of Azure’s AI tools and services. As more users and organizations adopt these agent-based features, Azure cloud consumption is likely to rise. This supports Microsoft’s ongoing focus on bringing AI into mainstream productivity and enterprise workflows.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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