The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock That Smart Money Is Buying This March

By Leo Sun – Mar 8, 2026 at 11:38AM ESTKey PointsNvidia still produces the best picks and shovels for the AI market.Its stock looks cheap relative to its growth potential.Nvidia (NVDA 2.94%), the world's largest producer of discrete GPUs, is the top artificial intelligence (AI) stock for many investors. Most of the world's top AI companies use its chips to train their AI algorithms, and it locks in those clients with its proprietary services. Nvidia's stock has already soared nearly 22,000% over the past decade -- lifting its market cap to $4.3 trillion and making it the world's most valuable company. However, the smart money will likely keep flowing into Nvidia's stock in March as the AI market continues expanding. Image source: Getty Images. Why is Nvidia still a great growth stock? Nvidia once generated most of its revenue from selling gaming GPUs for PCs, but the lion's share now comes from its data center GPUs. Unlike CPUs, which are optimized for sequential tasks, GPUs are designed to process parallel tasks. That makes them better-suited for processing complex machine learning and AI tasks than stand-alone CPUs. Nvidia established a first-mover advantage in this market, and it maintained that lead with its Turing (2019), Ampere (2020), Hopper (2022), and Blackwell (2024) chip architectures. It plans to launch its next chip architecture, Rubin, in the second half of this year. It controls more than 90% of the discrete GPU market, while AMD (AMD 3.46%) holds a single-digit share. Nvidia's proprietary programming platform, CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), enables developers to easily create AI applications optimized for its chips. The stickiness of that ecosystem, which includes other prisoner-taking services, reinforces its market dominance. Nvidia directly invests in some of the fastest-growing AI companies, including OpenAI, and has secured major partnerships with government and commercial customers. In other words, it will continue selling the best picks and shovels for the ongoing AI gold rush. ExpandNASDAQ: NVDANvidiaToday's Change(-2.94%) $-5.39Current Price$177.95Key Data PointsMarket Cap$4.3TDay's Range$176.83 - $182.7552wk Range$86.62 - $212.19Volume6MAvg Vol177MGross Margin71.07%Dividend Yield0.02% Why is the smart money still buying Nvidia's stock? From fiscal 2026 (which ended in Jan. 2026) to fiscal 2029, analysts expect Nvidia's revenue and EPS to grow at CAGRs of 36% and 37%, respectively. Those are incredible growth rates for a stock that trades at 22 times forward earnings. It also repurchased a whopping $40.1 billion in shares in fiscal 2026, and it still has $58.5 billion left in its current buyback authorization. Nvidia faces competition from AMD's cheaper data center GPUs and Broadcom's (AVGO 0.54%) custom AI accelerators, while export restrictions continue to throttle its chip sales to China. Yet it should easily overcome those challenges as it remains a linchpin of the AI market -- so it's still a great growth stock for long-term investors to accumulate.Read NextMar 8, 2026 •By James HiresAmazon Just Committed $200 Billion to Capital Expenditures. This Is the AI Stock That Will Benefit Most in 2026.Mar 8, 2026 •By Jennifer SaibilCan Nvidia Stock Double by 2030?Mar 7, 2026 •By Geoffrey Seiler5 Hyper-Growth Tech Stocks to Buy in 2026Mar 7, 2026 •By Ryan Vanzo1 Number From Nvidia's Earnings Report That Changes EverythingMar 7, 2026 •By Daniel SparksNvidia Stock Has Fallen Almost 5% This Year. Is Now a Good Time to Buy?Mar 7, 2026 •By Geoffrey Seiler3 Top Tech Stocks to Buy in MarchAbout the AuthorLeo Sun is a contributing Motley Fool stock market analyst who has worked with the company since 2013, covering technology, consumer goods, industrial, and financial sectors. He became a self-made millionaire by age 40 through long-term investing, crediting lessons from Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch. Leo is a regular guest on CNBC Asia providing stock analysis on Chinese technology companies, including Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba. He previously wrote for InvestorGuide and holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin.TMFSunLionX@TMFSunLionStocks MentionedNvidiaNASDAQ: NVDA$177.95(-2.94%)-$5.39BroadcomNASDAQ: AVGO$330.99(-0.54%)-$1.78Advanced Micro DevicesNASDAQ: AMD$192.43(-3.52%)-$7.02*Average returns of all recommendations since inception. Cost basis and return based on previous market day close.