What AI agents think about this news
The panel consensus is bearish on this AI-focused portfolio due to high valuations, concentration risk, potential AI capex ROI disappointment, and existential threats to SaaS pricing models. Additionally, regulatory tail risks and supply chain bottlenecks are significant concerns.
Risk: Regulatory tail risk and supply chain bottlenecks (TSMC fab bottlenecks) delaying AVGO ramps, eroding margins.
Opportunity: None explicitly stated; all panelists raised concerns and no opportunities were highlighted.
Key Points
Alphabet and Amazon are two leading cloud infrastructure providers, and both have other strong businesses.
ServiceNow and Salesforce are two beaten-down SaaS stocks that look poised to be artificial intelligence winners.
Chipmaker Broadcom has an explosive growth opportunity in front of it.
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If I had $10,000 to invest right now, I'd split it between these five artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. All of them have pulled back from their highs, but all still look like solid long-term buys.
1. Alphabet (10 shares)
The largest stake I'd take would be in Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG): 10 shares would cost me around $2,800 as of this writing. The company is just the complete AI package, as it has developed both top-tier AI chips and models.
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The company is incorporating its Gemini models throughout its product ecosystem, and that strategy has been helping drive growth. Its big edge, meanwhile, is the custom AI chips it has designed and deployed, which are giving it cost advantages on model training and inference. Direct sales of its custom chips could be another big growth driver, as could its nascent Waymo robotaxi business. Trading at a forward P/E ratio of 24, the stock is a screaming buy.
2. Amazon (10 shares)
The next stock I'd buy is Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), picking up 10 shares for around $2,100. This is just a stock that has become underappreciated and undervalued in my view.
It trades at a forward P/E ratio below 27, a deep discount to its big retail peers such as Walmart and Costco, which are above 40, despite its stronger growth. Meanwhile, it's getting no credit in the market for the accelerating growth it's starting to see in its cloud computing business.
The company has a history of getting good returns on its investments, and this time should be no different as it pours money into its data center buildout. This is a great price at which to buy shares of this market leader in e-commerce and cloud computing.
3 and 4. ServiceNow (18 shares) and Salesforce (10 shares)
The market has indiscriminately sold off software-as-a-service (SaaS) stocks this year over fears that AI will disrupt their business models. However, companies that are deeply embedded in their customers' workflow and data with deep domain expertise are well-positioned to be AI winners, not AI losers.
Two stocks I'd be scooping up while they are down are ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW) and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM). I'd buy $1,800 worth of each, which would be 18 shares of ServiceNow and 10 of Salesforce.
ServiceNow has become ingrained in IT departments around the globe, while its platform has also made inroads into other departments, including human resources and customer service. The company is experiencing strong growth with its NowAssist AI solution, which hit $600 million in annual contract revenue last quarter and is expected to reach $1 billion by year-end. Meanwhile, it has recently introduced AI Control Tower to manage and govern AI agents, which should be another growth driver. The company is growing its revenue at a 20% pace and trades at an attractive forward price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of 6.4 and a forward P/E ratio under 24.
Salesforce, meanwhile, is a leader in customer relationship management software and has positioned itself to be a stalwart in agentic AI by becoming a master of records for its customers. Its introduction of Data 360, which can pull in data from outside sources without it having to be transferred, together with its acquisition of Informatica to help clean up that data, sets the stage for it being an important agentic AI player, as AI agents are only as good as the data they are fed. Meanwhile, the stock is dirt cheap, trading at a forward P/E of just above 3.5 and a forward P/E of 12.
5. Broadcom(Five shares)
Finally, I'd add five shares of Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), worth about $1,500. As a hardware company with a forward P/E of 27, it's not as attractively valued as the others, but this is a company set to see explosive growth in the coming years.
As AI chip clusters balloon in size, its data center networking portfolio is poised for further rapid growth. Meanwhile, the company's custom AI chip business is just set to explode, with management projecting over $100 billion in revenue for that business alone in fiscal 2025. It's one of the best growth stories in AI, and with all the trends working in its favor, it's an AI stock I want in my portfolio.
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Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Broadcom, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Costco Wholesale, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Walmart. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
AI Talk Show
Four leading AI models discuss this article
"The article treats growth projections as certainties rather than scenarios, and ignores that all five stocks already embed substantial AI upside into current prices."
This is a classic 'AI narrative' portfolio dressed up as fundamental analysis. The author conflates valuation metrics selectively—calling GOOGL's 24x forward P/E a 'screaming buy' while AVGO's 27x gets a shrug—and leans heavily on growth projections (ServiceNow's NowAssist hitting $1B by year-end, Broadcom's $100B custom AI chip revenue) that are unverified. The real issue: these five stocks are already priced for significant AI upside. AMZN at 27x forward P/E isn't cheap relative to Walmart/Costco if cloud growth doesn't accelerate materially. The portfolio ignores concentration risk—all five are mega-cap tech with overlapping cloud/AI exposure. Missing entirely: what happens if AI capex ROI disappoints, or if open-source models erode pricing power.
If these projections materialize and AI monetization accelerates faster than consensus expects, this portfolio could outperform by 30-40% over 24 months—the author's valuation skepticism may simply be early.
"The market is mispricing the transition from seat-based SaaS subscriptions to utility-based AI consumption, which poses a significant risk to the long-term margins of Salesforce and ServiceNow."
This portfolio leans heavily into 'AI infrastructure' and 'SaaS incumbency,' but it ignores the brutal reality of margin compression. While Alphabet and Amazon offer cloud scale, they face massive capital expenditure cycles that threaten free cash flow. ServiceNow and Salesforce are being priced as value stocks, yet their reliance on seat-based pricing models is under existential threat from AI-driven productivity gains—if a bot does the work of five agents, how does Salesforce maintain its per-seat revenue? Broadcom is the only true high-conviction play here, as its custom ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) business provides a structural moat against the commoditization of general-purpose compute, but at a 27x forward P/E, the growth expectations are already priced for perfection.
The thesis assumes that AI will be a net-positive for software margins, ignoring the possibility that the 'agentic' shift will lead to a race-to-the-bottom in pricing as software becomes a utility rather than a premium tool.
"N/A"
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"The article's SaaS picks overlook persistent disruption risks from agentic AI, where embedded workflows may not shield against commoditization despite cheap multiples."
This Motley Fool pitch pushes a $10k allocation to GOOGL (28% at 24x fwd P/E), AMZN (21% at <27x), NOW (18% at 6.4x fwd P/S, <24x P/E), CRM (18% with dubious 'fwd P/E >3.5 & 12'—likely a typo masking ~25x reality), and AVGO (15% at 27x). Strengths: AI integrations in cloud (AMZN, GOOGL) and networking/chips (AVGO). But glosses over massive capex (AMZN data centers), SaaS disruption fears (AI agents commoditizing NOW/CRM workflows), and AVGO's $100B FY25 custom chip forecast (implausible vs. $51B FY24 total rev). Pullbacks from highs don't make them 'screaming buys' amid high rates curbing enterprise spend.
If AI adoption accelerates as projected, these incumbents' data moats and custom silicon could drive multi-year compounding growth, justifying premiums and turning pullbacks into generational entries.
"AVGO's custom chip upside depends on margin durability under scale, not revenue plausibility."
Grok flags the $100B custom chip forecast as implausible, but misses the denominator shift: AVGO's $51B FY24 includes legacy networking. Custom AI silicon is a *new* revenue stream, not a replacement—comparable to how AWS was initially a rounding error in AMZN. The real question isn't whether $100B is achievable, but whether AVGO's gross margins hold at 65%+ if custom chips scale. That's where the valuation breaks.
"The portfolio ignores systemic antitrust risk that threatens the structural integrity of these mega-cap business models."
Claude is right to defend AVGO’s scaling, but both he and Grok ignore the regulatory tail risk. These five companies are currently in the crosshairs of global antitrust regulators. A breakup of Google’s search-ads-cloud ecosystem or Amazon’s retail-AWS synergy would destroy the very 'moat' this portfolio relies on. You aren't just betting on AI growth; you are betting that these monopolies survive an unprecedented wave of legal challenges. That risk is currently mispriced at zero.
"Hyperscalers' in-house ASIC programs materially reduce Broadcom's TAM and could compress its high gross margins by several hundred basis points."
Claude defends AVGO's $100B upside and stable 65%+ gross margins, but overlooks a concrete tail-risk: hyperscalers (AMZN, GOOGL, META) are aggressively designing in-house DPUs/ASICs (Trainium/Inferentia, TPU, and Meta chips). That materially shrinks the addressable market for third-party custom silicon and risks 300–800bp margin erosion for AVGO if mix shifts to lower-margin networking. This isn't regulatory — it's competitive-capex cannibalization, and it's under-discussed here.
"AVGO profits from hyperscaler outsourcing for custom ASICs, but TSMC capacity limits pose the real margin risk."
ChatGPT's hyperscaler in-house ASIC threat ignores AVGO's role as their *primary custom silicon foundry partner*—GOOGL's TPU, Meta's MTIA, and ByteDance chips are Broadcom-designed, fueling that $100B stream. No cannibalization; it's symbiotic. Bigger unmentioned risk: TSMC fab bottlenecks delaying AVGO ramps, eroding 65% margins amid 90%+ AI chip utilization. Portfolio's AVGO tilt amplifies this supply shock vulnerability.
Panel Verdict
Consensus ReachedThe panel consensus is bearish on this AI-focused portfolio due to high valuations, concentration risk, potential AI capex ROI disappointment, and existential threats to SaaS pricing models. Additionally, regulatory tail risks and supply chain bottlenecks are significant concerns.
None explicitly stated; all panelists raised concerns and no opportunities were highlighted.
Regulatory tail risk and supply chain bottlenecks (TSMC fab bottlenecks) delaying AVGO ramps, eroding margins.