3 AI Stocks Stuck in Neutral to Buy Before Their Next Catalysts Hit

3 AI Stocks Stuck in Neutral to Buy Before Their Next Catalysts Hit

Geoffrey Seiler, The Motley Fool

Fri, September 18, 2026 at 6:35 PM GMT+3 5 min read

Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks as a class have had another solid year thus far in 2026, but not all of them have participated in the rally. In fact, Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are all around breakeven for the year. All three are top-notch companies, and investors should be scooping up shares in these three top AI stocks before their next catalysts arrive.

Broadcom

Down by approximately 30% from the high it set this spring, Broadcom now finds itself trading at a roughly break-even level for the year. This tepid result comes despite the company having a clear path toward rapid growth over the next couple of years.

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Broadcom is a leader in data center networking, but its custom chip business is now its biggest growth driver. The company helped Alphabet develop its highly praised Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), and these chips will be Broadcom's biggest revenue contributor over the next few years, with huge purchase commitments from both Alphabet and Anthropic. It also helped OpenAI and Meta develop their new custom chips, and both are slated to become large customers as these programs ramp up.

As a result, Broadcom expects its AI chip revenue to double in fiscal 2027 and then double again in fiscal 2028 to $230 billion, with adjusted earnings per share (EPS) climbing to more than $30. At today's share price and market cap, the company is valued at below 11.5 times its fiscal 2028 earnings projections.

The catalysts that should send the stock higher will be Anthropic and OpenAI continuing to invest in AI compute capacity, despite recent calls for an AI slowdown, and Broadcom maintaining strong margins in its semiconductor segment.

Meta Platforms

Meta is another stock that has oscillated sideways this year, despite the company putting up impressive growth. After several steep drops and rebounds, it's about flat for the year. However, unlike Broadcom's stock, which has been on a downward trend lately, Meta's stock is in the midst of a rally.

The core bullish case for Meta is evident. The company has the perfect flywheel business for AI, as its investments in the technology have helped it induce users to spend more time on its platforms, and given advertisers the tools to more effectively reach their target audiences and convert them into customers. This has been showing up in Meta's results. Last quarter, it saw a 14% increase in ad impressions and a 12% rise in ad prices due to their increased effectiveness.

However, the knock on Meta as an investment has been the massive scale of its AI infrastructure spending, and investors clearly want to see something more from the company. Well, Meta recently delivered on that with its new Muse AI agent, which can perform a variety of tasks for people, including making purchases and appointments on their behalf, designing travel itineraries and booking trips, and filling out forms. While the company will have paid tiers for power users, the biggest share of the revenue Meta reaps from this offering will likely come from the processing and affiliate fees it will collect whenever Muse buys something. Meanwhile, I expect the next big catalysts for the stock will be updates on Muse AI agent user growth and indications that the company is starting to monetize this new product.

Microsoft

Another stock now trading near breakeven for the year is Microsoft. The stock was caught in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) sell-off early in the year, but staged a big rally following its fiscal Q4 earnings report at the end of July. However, it has been trading sideways since early August.

Microsoft's cloud computing business continues to achieve robust growth, with Azure revenue climbing 43% year over year last quarter. That was the segment's 12th consecutive quarter of 30% or more revenue growth. Meanwhile, Microsoft had a huge backlog of Azure commitments totaling $679 billion as of its fiscal year-end.

At the same time, the company's enterprise software business continues to grow at a solid pace, led by strong adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Its net paid additions doubled sequentially last quarter, bringing the number of Copilot seats to more than 30 million. Meanwhile, Microsoft 365 commercial revenue rose 16%.

The next catalysts for Microsoft stock should arrive when it demonstrates continued enterprise Copilot uptake, progress with its custom chips and AI models, and continued diversification of its cloud business away from OpenAI.

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Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet, Broadcom, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Broadcom, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

3 AI Stocks Stuck in Neutral to Buy Before Their Next Catalysts Hit was originally published by The Motley Fool