In this article, we look at the Best Data Center Stocks to Buy for the Long Term.

In the era of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, data centers have shifted from being simple digital warehouses to becoming vital infrastructures of the modern economy. These facilities host the file servers and networking equipment that store and process the data required to train, deploy, and scale artificial intelligence globally.

According to Jones Lang La Salle (JLL)’s 2026 Global Data Center Outlook, the global data center sector is projected to increase by 97 gigawatts (GW) between 2025 and 2030, effectively doubling in size over a five-year period. It added that global data center capacity could reach 200 GW by 2030.

“This rapid growth will be driven largely by hyperscale cloud expansion and AI demand,” JLL said.

While AI has been rapidly gaining daily active users, JLL noted that it accounted for only about a quarter of all data center workloads in 2025, with training driving most of the demand.

“However, a significant shift is anticipated in 2027, when inference workloads could overtake training as the dominant AI requirement,” JLL said.

With the rise of AI seen to continue driving data center demand in the coming years, let’s take a look at the 10 Best Data Center Stocks to Buy for the Long Term.

Our Methodology

To compile our list of the best data center stocks, we screened U.S.-listed companies that are either pure-play data center operators or have significant exposure to the sector, leveraging ETFs, industry research, and proprietary databases. From this pool, we selected the 10 stocks most widely owned by hedge funds, based on Q4 2025 filings from Insider Monkey’s database. These names were then ranked by the number of hedge funds holding positions in them.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 498.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 303 percentage points (see more details here).

Note: All pricing data is as of market close on April 16, 2026.

10. CoreWeaveInc. (NASDAQ:CRWV)

Market Cap: $62.85 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 58

CoreWeave Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) is one of the best data center stocks to buy for the long term. The stock’s price more than doubled from a year ago, up 205.86%, while it registered a 50.73% increase year-to-date. On April 16, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brett Knoblauch raised his price target for the CoreWeave stock to $156 from $149 and reiterated a Buy rating, highlighting the company’s recent large-scale deals such as its $6 billion AI cloud agreement with Jane Street, its $21 billion deal with Meta Platforms, and a multi-billion-dollar deal with Anthropic.

Under the expanded partnership with Jane Street, CoreWeave will provide the former with access to next-generation compute across multiple facilities, including NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin technology and the software and services required to deploy and scale its AI solutions.

Last week, CoreWeave also announced a multi-year agreement with Anthropic to support the development and deployment of Anthropic’s Claude family of AI models. Under the agreement, Anthropic will use CoreWeave’s cloud platform to run workloads at production scale, while benefiting from its industry-leading performance and reliability.

“We’re excited to work with Anthropic at the center of where models are put to work and performance in production shows up. It’s exactly the kind of real-world deployment of AI that CoreWeave was built for,” said Michael Intrator, Co-founder, CEO, Chairman of CoreWeave.

The company said the collaboration will initially focus on a phased infrastructure roll-out with the potential to expand over time.

Aside from the partnership with Anthropic, CoreWeave also announced earlier this week an expanded, long-term agreement with Meta Platforms, Inc. to provide AI cloud capacity through December 2032 for approximately $21 billion.

According to CoreWeave, the dedicated capacity will be deployed across multiple locations and will include some of the initial deployments of the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform. This distributed approach is designed to optimize performance, resilience, and scalability for Meta’s AI operations.

It added that the new agreement is a clear signal of the industry’s accelerating demand for high-performance infrastructure capable of supporting increasingly complex, large-scale AI workloads.

CoreWeave Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWV) is an AI cloud computing company that specializes in providing cloud-based graphics processing unit (GPU) infrastructure to AI developers and enterprises.

9. Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)

Market Cap:$325.31 billion 

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 77

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)is one of the 10 Best Data Center Stocks to Buy for the Long Term. The stock is up 51.58% from its price a year ago and 11.13% year-to-date. On April 16, JPMorgan raised its price target on CSCO to $96 from $95 and kept an Overweight rating on the shares. JPMorgan expects AI infrastructure investments across server, switches, copper interconnects, and optical to drive upside to AI-levered suppliers in the first quarter.

Cisco earlier reported 10 percent revenue growth for the quarter ending January 24, 2026. Cisco said second-quarter net income on a GAAP basis registered at $3.2 billion or $0.80 per share, while non-GAAP net income was $4.1 billion or $1.04 per share.

Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco, was encouraged by the results. In a statement, he said:

“Cisco’s strong second quarter and first half of fiscal 2026 demonstrate both the power of our portfolio and the fundamental role we continue to play in connecting and protecting customers in a rapidly evolving landscape.”

“With over 40 years of customer trust, global scale, and a relentless focus on innovation, we believe Cisco is uniquely positioned to deliver the trusted infrastructure needed to securely and confidently power the AI-era,” he added.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) designs, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment, and other high-technology services and products. The company’s offerings include routers, switches, cybersecurity solutions, and collaboration tools, serving a wide range of industries and customers globally.

8. Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET)

Market Cap:$2o2.31 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 91

Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) is one of the best data center stocks to buy for the long term. The stock more than doubled, up 126.14% from a year ago, while it registered a 20.52% increase year-to-date. On April 16, Arista Networks received an increased price target from JPMorgan to $200 from $190, as well as a retained overweight rating on its shares. JPMorgan expects AI infrastructure investments across servers, switches, copper interconnects, and optics to drive upside for AI-levered suppliers in the first quarter.

Earlier, on April 7, Rosenblatt analyst Mike Genovese upgraded Arista Networks to Buy from Neutral with a price target of $180, up from $165, based on increased confidence in ANET’s XPO strategy, referring to the recently launched liquid-cooled optics module designed to support AI networking, including scale-up, scale-out, scale-across, and metro reach fabrics.

In March, the company announced the formation of a multi-source agreement (MSA) for XPO, a revolutionary 12.8 Tbps liquid-cooled optics module that supports a front panel density of 204.8 Tbps per open compute rack unit, a 4X improvement compared to 1600G-OSFP optics.

Arista Networks Chief Architect Andreas Bechtolsheim said the unprecedented growth in AI fabric bandwidth and the transition to liquid cooling require a new generation of pluggable optics modules.

“XPO solves this challenge by providing fundamental improvements in density, cooling capability and reliability for pluggable optics modules,” Bechtolsheim said.

In 2025, the company reported $9.006 billion in revenues, an increase of 28.6 percent compared to the previous year, noting that it had surpassed its AI networking and campus expansion goals.

Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) is an industry leader in data-driven, client-to-cloud networking for large AI, data center, campus, and routing environments.

7. Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC)

Market Cap:$343.94 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 96

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) is one of the best data center stocks to buy for the long term. Intel shares have skyrocketed by 261.86% over the past year and by an equally impressive 73.95% year-to-date. Intel shares surged 5.48% yesterday alone as the company announced a new Core Series 3 line of mobile processors.

Intel General Manager and Vice President of Consumer PC, Client Computing Group, Josh Newman, expressed optimism for the new offering. He said:

“At a time when prices are rising and expectations are shifting, Intel Core Series 3 elevates value-orientated computing with exceptional battery life, boosted AI-ready performance, and broad ecosystem choice. By delivering the latest IP with modern, purpose designed silicon and right-sized performance, we’re expanding access to better technology that meets the real-world needs of students, families, small businesses, and edge deployments at a scale that no other company can match.”

Aside from the launch of the new mobile processors, Intel has been forging partnerships aligned with its efforts to stay competitive in the era of AI. On April 9, Intel announced a multiyear collaboration with Google to advance the next generation of AI and cloud infrastructure, reinforcing the critical role of CPUs and custom infrastructure processing units (IPUs) in scaling modern, heterogeneous AI systems.

The company emphasized that as AI adoption accelerates, infrastructure is becoming more complex and heterogeneous, driving increased reliance on CPUs for orchestration, data processing, and system-level performance.

Intel CEO emphasized the importance of CPUs and IPUs in keeping up with AI workload demand. He said:

“AI is reshaping how infrastructure is built and scaled. Scaling AI requires more than accelerators – it requires balanced systems. CPUs and IPUs are central to delivering the performance, efficiency and flexibility modern AI workloads demand.”

Through the collaboration, Intel and Google will align across multiple generations of Intel Xeon processors to improve performance, energy efficiency, and total cost of ownership across Google’s global infrastructure.

Earlier this month, Intel also announced that it forged a definitive agreement for the repurchase of the 49 percent equity interest in the joint venture related to Intel’s Fab 34 in Ireland, not held by Intel, for $14.2 billion.

Intel said the agreement reflects its continued business momentum underpinned by the growing and essential role CPUs play in the era of AI, a significantly strengthened balance sheet, and the strong partnership with global alternative asset manager Apollo.

In 2024, Apollo-managed funds and affiliates led an $11.2 billion investment to acquire a 49 percent equity interest in a joint venture entity related to Fab 34, providing Intel with equity-like capital while preserving balance sheet strength.

“This transaction provided Intel with significant financial flexibility and enabled the company to unlock and redeploy capital to advance its strategic priorities, including accelerating the buildout of Intel 4 and Intel 3, the most advanced processes manufactured in Europe, and of Intel 18A, the most advanced process developed and manufactured in the U.S. today,” Intel said.

Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) designs and manufactures microprocessors and semiconductor components. The company’s products are used in a wide range of computing devices, from personal computers to data centers and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

6. Vertiv Holdings Co. (NYSE:VRT)

Market Cap:$112.53 billion

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 112

Vertiv Holdings Co. is one of the best data center stocks to buy for the long term. The stock grew by 301.76% from a year ago and 67.49% on a year-to-date basis. On April 16, Roth Capital raised its price target on Vertiv to $335 from $275 and kept a Buy rating on the shares. Roth Capital said it expects Vertiv’s central role in the AI infrastructure buildout to drive continued order momentum in 2026, supported by a robust pipeline and increasing adoption of prefab solutions and liquid cooling, which is seen to support higher content per MW.

In its first-quarter 2026 commentary for its “Mid Cap Strategy”, global equity manager ClearBridge Investments noted that Vertiv continued to benefit from the robust demand associated with data center construction.

Vertiv recently announced an investment of about $50 million to expand its manufacturing presence in Ironton, Ohio, and its headquarters campus in Westerville, Ohio.

According to the company, the projects are expected to create hundreds of new jobs through 2029 and strengthen Vertiv’s ability to support growing customer demand for AI, high-density computing, and other critical digital infrastructure applications.

It added that the Ironton expansion, which is expected to be operational in the second quarter of 2027, is planned to increase production capacity for Vertiv liquid cooling and chilled water systems used in advanced thermal management applications.

“This investment expands our manufacturing capacity and strengthens the engineering, sales, service, and logistics capabilities that support customers building the next generation of digital infrastructure. It also reflects our confidence in the talent, commitment, and long-standing support we continue to see across Ohio and within the communities where we operate,” said Giordano Albertazzi, CEO of Vertiv.

In March, the company also announced four new or expanding manufacturing facilities in the Americas, in a bid to grow the company’s production capacity for infrastructure solutions, power management, and integrated cabinets.

These include two additional manufacturing facilities in South Carolina for its infrastructure solutions technologies, an additional facility for its racks and containment business in Pennsylvania, and an expansion in Mexicali, Mexico, to increase power conversion, conditioning, and distribution technologies for high-density AI applications and more traditional loads.

“As data center operators focus on scaling quickly and time to first token speed, Vertiv is uniquely positioned to help meet the rapidly evolving infrastructure and services requirements for AI factories, through its focus on innovation and manufacturing footprint,” the company said.

Vertiv Holdings Co. (NYSE:VRT) is engaged in the design, manufacturing, and servicing of critical digital infrastructure for data centers, communication networks, and commercial and industrial environments. The company specializes in thermal management, power distribution, and backup power systems, ensuring high efficiency and reliability in mission-critical operations.

Click to continue reading and see the 5 Best Data Center Stocks to Buy for the Long Term.

Disclosure: None. Follow Insider Monkey on Google News.