10 Stocks Powering Into 2026 With Explosive Gains

Ten stocks kicked off the first trading day of the year soaring by double digits, tracking the rally in AI stocks and beneficiary industries, namely energy and high-performance computing, among others.

In contrast, Wall Street’s three major indices finished mixed, with the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 the only gainers, up 0.66 percent and 0.19 percent, respectively. The Nasdaq dipped by 0.03 percent.

Indices aside, we spotlight the names of the 10 top-performing stocks on Friday and detail the reasons behind their gains.

To come up with the list, we focused exclusively on stocks with a market capitalization of at least $2 billion.

The New York Stock Exchange building. Photo by Дмитрий Трепольский on Pexels

10. CleanSpark Inc. (NASDAQ:CLSK)

CleanSpark snapped a six-day losing streak on Friday, jumping 14.13 percent to close at $11.55 apiece as investors took heart from higher Bitcoin prices while repositioning portfolios ahead of its mining report for the December and full-year 2025 periods.

After the US markets officially closed the trading week, investor funds shifted to Bitcoin, supporting the latter’s return to the $90,000 level before trimming gains to trade back to the $89,000 as of writing (5 PM EST).

The rally spilled over to Bitcoin mining firms such as CleanSpark Inc. (NASDAQ:CLSK), MARA Holdings Inc., Hut 8 Corp., American Bitcoin Corp., Bitdeer Technologies, and Bitfarms, among others.

Based on its historical reporting dates, CleanSpark Inc. (NASDAQ:CLSK) is set to announce the results of its December and full-year Bitcoin mining update on Monday, January 5.

In November alone, CleanSpark Inc. (NASDAQ:CLSK) said that it was able to mine 587 Bitcoins, bringing its total ownership to 13,054 units as of the said period.

It also sold 565.41 units at an average price of $91,979 for a total earnings of $52 million.

CleanSpark Inc. (NASDAQ:CLSK) is originally a Bitcoin mining firm that is slowly transitioning to AI servicing through high-performance computing (HPC).

9. Applied Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:APLD)

Applied Digital rallied for a second day on Friday, surging 14.64 percent to close at $28.11 apiece as investors poured funds back into artificial intelligence players and industries riding the wave, despite the lack of fresh catalysts.

In recent news, Applied Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:APLD) successfully spun off its cloud computing and data center businesses as part of its efforts to create separate platforms that would focus on its core strengths.

The initiative was implemented through a merger with EKSO Bionics Holdings Inc., an exoskeleton technology firm for medical and industrial uses, which will eventually be renamed ChronoScale and focus solely on an accelerated compute platform for AI workloads.

Applied Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:APLD) would own 97 percent of the combined firm, while EKSO Bionics would explore potential buyers for the sale of all or a substantial chunk of its business and assets.

“As enterprise and AI-native demand for GPU-accelerated cloud infrastructure continues to grow rapidly, the proposed transaction is intended to create a focused platform designed to deliver high-performance compute at scale in a capacity-constrained market,” Applied Digital Corp. (NASDAQ:APLD) said.