2 High-Conviction AI Stocks to Buy and Hold for the Next Decade: Strategic Dominance in the AI Era

The artificial intelligence revolution is reshaping global industries, and two companies stand out as foundational pillars of this transformation: Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL). Both are not only capitalizing on the AI boom but are actively engineering the infrastructure and ecosystems that will define the next decade of technological progress. Their strategic investments, recurring revenue models, and market dominance position them as compelling long-term holds for investors seeking to align with the AI-driven future.

Nvidia: The Unstoppable Engine of AI Hardware and Ecosystems

Nvidia's dominance in AI hardware is unmatched, driven by its cutting-edge GPUs and the CUDA software platform, which together form the backbone of modern AI training and inference. According to a report by MarketBeat, Nvidia's Q4 2025 financial results underscored its explosive growth, with revenue hitting $39.3 billion-a 78% year-over-year increase. The Data Center segment, which accounts for 90% of this revenue, surged to $35.6 billion, fueled by insatiable demand for AI infrastructure.

What sets Nvidia apart is its ability to scale innovation. The company's Blackwell architecture, designed for exascale computing, is already being deployed in AI supercomputers for enterprises and governments, ensuring its relevance in both training large language models and deploying efficient inference solutions. Furthermore, Nvidia's partnerships with cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud are expanding its AI ecosystem, creating a flywheel effect where more developers and enterprises adopt its tools.

Looking ahead, Nvidia's guidance for Q1 2026-projecting $43.0 billion in revenue and 70.6% gross margins-reflects confidence in sustained demand. Its recurring revenue model, anchored by software licenses and ecosystem lock-in, ensures long-term profitability even as hardware cycles evolve. For investors, this represents a rare combination of near-term growth and durable competitive advantages.

Alphabet: Monetizing AI Across Search, Cloud, and Advertising

While Nvidia powers the "engine" of AI, Alphabet is mastering the "applications," embedding AI into its core businesses to drive efficiency and new revenue streams. Alphabet's Q2 2025 results highlighted its strategic agility: total revenue reached $96.4 billion, with Google Cloud growing 32% year-over-year to $13.6 billion. This growth is directly tied to the adoption of its Gemini AI model, which is being integrated into enterprise workflows and consumer-facing tools like Google Search.

Alphabet's AI Overviews feature, which delivers real-time, AI-generated answers in search results, is a prime example of how the company is leveraging AI to enhance user engagement and advertising revenue. By reducing friction in information retrieval, Alphabet is not only improving user experience but also increasing ad impressions and click-through rates. Meanwhile, its $85 billion five-year investment in AI infrastructure-spanning data centers, chip development, and cloud expansion-ensures it can scale to meet surging demand.

What makes Alphabet a high-conviction hold is its ability to monetize AI across multiple vectors. Its advertising business, which accounts for ~80% of revenue, benefits from AI-driven personalization, while Google Cloud's enterprise AI offerings provide a high-margin, recurring revenue stream. With its vast data troves and deep integration across devices, Alphabet is uniquely positioned to dominate the

application layer.

Why These Two Stocks Belong in a Long-Term Portfolio

Both Nvidia and Alphabet exemplify the dual pillars of the AI revolution: infrastructure and application. Nvidia's hardware and software ecosystem create a moat that is difficult to replicate, while Alphabet's ability to weave AI into its existing businesses ensures sustained monetization. Their financials further reinforce this thesis: Nvidia's Data Center segment grew 93% year-over-year, and Alphabet's Google Cloud is on track to become a $50 billion business by 2027.

For investors with a decade-long horizon, these stocks offer more than short-term hype. They represent strategic bets on companies that are not just riding the AI wave but actively shaping its trajectory. As AI becomes the bedrock of global innovation, Nvidia and Alphabet's recurring revenue models, innovation pipelines, and market dominance will likely drive outsized returns.