The AI industry in early 2026 shows that spending is still rising quickly: Gartner projects worldwide AI spending to reach $2.52 trillion in 2026, up 44% year over year. But the mix matters. A large share is still going into infrastructure rather than finished business outcomes, with AI-optimized servers alone expected to account for $329.5 billion and AI processing semiconductors $267.9 billion in 2026. That suggests the industry is still building its base even as adoption broadens.
On the enterprise side, the industry appears to be moving from pilot programs toward wider operational use, though not evenly. Deloitte’s 2026 enterprise AI report says worker access to AI rose by 50% in 2025, and the share of companies with at least 40% of AI projects in production is expected to double within six months. At the same time, only 34% of organizations in that report were described as truly reimagining the business around AI, which suggests deployment is advancing faster than organizational redesign. OpenAI’s 2025 enterprise report points in the same direction: weekly ChatGPT Enterprise messages increased roughly 8x over the past year, while use of structured workflows such as Projects and Custom GPTs rose 19x year to date.
Gartner explicitly states that incumbent software providers are likely to be the primary channel for enterprise AI in 2026. Second, the infrastructure burden will continue to grow. The IEA says data-centre electricity consumption was about 415 TWh in 2024 and is projected to rise to around 945 TWh by 2030, with AI the main driver of that increase. In other words, the industry is still expanding, but scaling it now depends as much on power, chips, workflow redesign, and implementation discipline as on model quality itself.
Methodology
We used screeners to narrow down on AI-exposed stocks in the technology industry. We screened for stocks with a market cap over $1 billion, a 3M price change of 5-30%, and the 50-day simple moving average crossing the 200-day simple moving average. We limited our final selection to companies that have recently reported noteworthy developments likely to impact investor sentiment. These stocks are also popular among analysts and elite hedge funds.
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 427.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 264 percentage points (see more details here).
10. A10 Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ATEN)
A10 Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ATEN) is one of the best rising AI stocks to buy now.
On February 20, 2026, BWS Financial raised its price target on A10 Networks to $28 from $24 and maintained its Buy rating. The firm said A10’s network security business is positioned to benefit from the proliferation of AI-related network traffic and noted that the company’s growth outlook through 2028 is stronger than its outlook for 2026. BWS also highlighted A10’s fundamentals, including a 79% gross margin and 11% trailing-12-month revenue growth.
That call followed A10 Networks’ February 4, 2026, fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results. The company reported record fourth-quarter revenue of $80.4 million and full-year revenue of $290.6 million, up 11.0% year over year. Full-year GAAP net income was $42.1 million, while non-GAAP net income was $66.3 million. For 2026, A10 projected revenue growth of 10% to 12%. Management said the company is benefiting from demand tied to AI infrastructure, high-throughput networking, and customer data center buildouts.
A10 Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ATEN) provides security and infrastructure solutions that help enterprises, service providers, cloud operators, and web-scale companies secure applications and manage network performance.
9. NetScout Systems (NASDAQ:NTCT)
NetScout Systems (NASDAQ:NTCT) is one of the best rising AI stocks to buy now.
On February 19, 2026, NETSCOUT announced that it had extended its Omnis AI Insights offering to communications service providers, aiming to turn raw network traffic into AI-ready smart data for customer experience and network operations. The company said the move is meant to help telecom operators deploy AI agents for predictive maintenance, service assurance, and security while reducing costs and operational risk. NETSCOUT added that its Omnis AI Sensor for Service Providers delivers real-time curated data across environments, including 5G, RAN, Core, MEC, and Transport, while its Omnis AI Streamer is designed to turn large volumes of network telemetry into smaller, usable data feeds for AI agents, analytics platforms, and operations teams.
The company also pointed to a McKinsey survey of telecom executives cited in the release, which found that 64% are scaling AI efforts, while 45% identified data as the main barrier to scaling. NETSCOUT said it would showcase the offering at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on March 2-5, 2026.
NETSCOUT Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTCT) provides observability, AIOps, cybersecurity, and DDoS protection solutions, serving enterprises, service providers, and public sector organizations.
