Politicians trading stocks while in office has always sparked outrage. Critics believe politicians have access to insider information and advantages regular investors don’t have, giving them an unfair market edge.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump’s financial disclosures revealed more than 3,700 trades executed by him or his investment advisers in the first quarter.
A CNN report earlier this year said at least 10 senators bought or sold stocks last year in companies directly related to industries their committees oversee. The data came from Capitol Trades, which tracks politician trades. However, lawmakers say all their trades are legal and that they don’t personally manage their stock portfolios.
But here’s where it gets interesting: Data from Unusual Whales, which monitors congressional trading, shows that in 2025, roughly 100 out of 311 politicians tracked beat the S&P 500. That’s about one-third of Congress outperforming the market just by holding stocks.
The stocks identified in this article are based on Trump’s financial disclosure filings released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and reported by Reuters. According to a statement from the Trump Organization cited by Reuters, Trump’s investment holdings are maintained through fully discretionary accounts managed by third-party financial institutions, which have sole authority over investment decisions. The Trump Organization said neither Trump, his family, nor the company directs or approves specific investments. Trump’s assets are held in a trust controlled by his children. For this article, we scanned Trump’s recently disclosed and picked 10 AI and tech stocks that have performed extremely well since he purchased them.
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Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds, billionaires and notable politicians 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. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 599.2% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 372 percentage points (see more details here).
10. MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA)
Stock Performance Since Trade Date: +54%
MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA) is a Bitcoin mining company transitioning into an AI infrastructure power provider. It sells Bitcoin mining services and power capacity to data centers. Its customers are AI data centers and enterprise customers seeking reliable, low-cost power for high-performance computing operations. Its moat is sector-leading energy costs at $0.04 per kilowatt hour for owned sites, combined with an existing portfolio of 1.9 gigawatts of power infrastructure and institutional relationships being built through strategic partnerships.
MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA) is pivoting away from pure-play Bitcoin mining, which has been made increasingly volatile by cryptocurrency price fluctuations. The key indicator of its pivot is its acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power from FTAI Infrastructure Inc., which closed recently and represents the company’s commitment to diversifying revenue streams. This facility represents a 505 megawatt combined-cycle gas asset sitting on 1,600 acres of property with the potential to expand beyond 1 gigawatt of power capacity. MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA) plans to leverage this asset to provide AI data centers with the power capacity they require as they continue to expand their operations, positioning MARA as a critical infrastructure provider rather than a volatile mining proxy.
American Century Investments Small Cap Value Fund stated the following regarding MARA Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MARA) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:
“MARA Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MARA). Shares of this bitcoin miner and data center power solutions provider underperformed during the quarter as cryptocurrency-related plays sold off amid weakness in bitcoin prices. As a result, our lack of exposure to MARA was beneficial to relative returns.”
9. Adeia Inc (NASDAQ:ADEA)
Stock Performance Since Trade Date: +55%
Adeia Inc (NASDAQ:ADEA) is a patent licensing company. It sells the right to use its patents. Its customers are large technology companies like Disney, Microsoft, and AMD. These companies pay Adeia fees to use the patents in their products.
Adeia Inc’s (NASDAQ:ADEA) moat is its patent portfolio of about 14,000 patents. These patents cover important technologies in semiconductors, memory chips, and media streaming. The patents are hard to duplicate and valuable to major tech companies.
Adeia Inc’s (NASDAQ:ADEA) high-margin model is simple. It collects licensing fees from companies that use its patents. Once Adeia pays for research and legal costs, the rest is profit. The margins are very high because there are no manufacturing costs.
The global intellectual property licensing market is growing fast. It will grow from $13.9 billion in 2024 to $21.6 billion by 2030. That is a 7.5 percent annual growth rate. AI and semiconductor innovation are driving this growth. Adeia benefits directly from both trends because its patents cover these exact technologies.
Riverwater Partners Sustainable Value Strategy stated the following regarding Adeia Inc. (NASDAQ:ADEA) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:
“During the quarter, we initiated two positions: Adeia Inc. (NASDAQ:ADEA) and Synovus Financial Corp. (SNV). We initiated a position in Adeia, Inc. (ADEA) in the fourth quarter. ADEA licenses intellectual property (IP) to its customers for use in their media and semiconductor products and services. Spun out of Xperi Inc. (XPER) in 2022, ADEA has a broad range of media customers as licensees. Additionally, hybrid bonding is becoming a key technology used by semiconductor manufacturers as complexity increases. ADEA’s IP is currently licensed by the major memory players, with several logic players also interested.
ADEA is a “practicing” or research-based licensing entity that invests in innovations and advanced research and development (R&D) to create market-leading technologies in its key areas of focus (media and semiconductors). ADEA has 138 employees, 60% of which are PhDs with 50–100 patents on average; the top engineer has 650 patents, approaching Edison-level prolificacy. The company has developed over $500M of R&D since 2010…” (Click here to read the full text)
8. Iridium Communications (NASDAQ:IRDM)
Stock Performance Since Trade Date: +119%
Iridium Communications (NASDAQ:IRDM) operates a network of satellites orbiting Earth. The company generates revenue by charging subscribers for satellite communications services. These services include voice calls, data transmission, and Internet of Things tracking.
Who uses Iridium? Three main groups rely on the company. Governments, particularly the U.S. military, use Iridium for secure communications. Commercial businesses use it to monitor equipment in remote areas where traditional cell networks do not exist. Individual consumers buy satellite phones for emergencies and outdoor activities.
In May 2026, Iridium made a significant acquisition. Iridium Communications (NASDAQ:IRDM) purchased the remaining sixty-one percent of Aireon, an aviation surveillance company. Aireon operates a unique system. It tracks aircraft using satellites and provides complete global coverage. No competitor offers this capability. Aireon monitors approximately 190,000 flights daily. It collects detailed data, including aircraft location, altitude, speed, and identification. This acquisition positions Iridium in the high-growth aviation tracking market.
Iridium Communications’ (NASDAQ:IRDM) subscriber growth accelerated during the first quarter of 2026. Total billable subscribers reached 2.56 million, up from 2.44 million in the prior year period. Commercial subscribers drove nearly all this growth, increasing from 2.31 million to 2.43 million. Internet of Things subscribers, which track remote assets and collect data, expanded from 1.89 million to 2.02 million.
However, government subscribers declined from 133,000 to 121,000. This weakness creates a material risk. Iridium maintains an EMSS contract with the U.S. Space Force that requires renewal in late 2026 or 2027. Contract loss would significantly impact revenue.
7. Extreme Networks (NASDAQ:EXTR)
Stock Performance Since Trade Date: +91%
Extreme Networks (NASDAQ:EXTR) is a networking infrastructure company. It makes wired and wireless network equipment, including switches, wireless access points, and related hardware. It sells networking products and software solutions to enterprise customers, government agencies, educational institutions, and healthcare providers. Its moat is built on product differentiation through AI-driven networking capabilities and the shift toward a cloud-managed software platform that creates customer stickiness. Its customers are large enterprises, federal government agencies, financial services companies, and educational institutions that require robust networking infrastructure.
Extreme Networks (NASDAQ:EXTR) is making a foray into artificial intelligence with its Extreme Platform ONE, an AI-driven networking platform that automates network management and provides intelligent network analytics. The platform allows customers to manage complex networking tasks at a fraction of the time compared to their previous systems. Approximately 36 percent of total revenues are now recurring, up from lower levels in previous years, with software-as-a-service annual recurring revenue growing 29 percent year-over-year.
SouthernSun Smid Cap Strategy stated the following regarding Extreme Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXTR) in its fourth quarter 2025 investor letter:
During the fourth quarter we initiated new positions in Oshkosh Corporation (OSK), Live Oak Bancshares Inc (LOB) and Extreme Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXTR) Extreme Networks, Inc. (EXTR) Earlier in 2025, we added EXTR to the Small Cap strategy. We have continued to get to know the company throughout the year, and our conviction has built, so in the fourth quarter we added EXTR to the SMID strategy. Extreme Networks is one of the top three players in the enterprise networking industry, although it remains a distant third behind Cisco and Hewlett Packard (HPE), which together control more than 60% of the market.
We believe EXTR has the opportunity to grow revenues in the low double-digit range and gain market share due to advantages in product architecture, pricing, and customer experience. Unlike its larger competitors, which are primarily focused on datacenter-centric network designs, Extreme offers a differentiated fabric-based architecture that is well suited for distributed environments. This makes EXTR particularly attractive for customers such as college campuses, hospitals, stadiums, convention centers, and industrial facilities with complex operational networks and growing numbers of connected devices..…” (Click here to read the full text)
6. Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL)
Stock Performance Since Trade Date: +200%
Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) is one of the top performers in Donald Trump’s stock portfolio. Since the position was initiated in February, shares have gained 196%, a run fueled by the company’s deepening role in the AI infrastructure buildout.
Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) was once dismissed as a legacy PC hardware vendor with limited growth prospects. That narrative is obsolete. The company has reinvented itself as one of the world’s largest integrators of high-performance AI infrastructure, and its Q1 FY27 results put hard numbers behind that claim. Revenue jumped 88% year over year, the highest quarterly sales figure in company history. AI-optimized server revenue surged 757% year over year to $16.1 billion, a figure that now exceeds Dell’s entire Client Solutions Group revenue of $14.6 billion.
Bulls point to the backlog as the most durable part of the thesis. Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) booked $24.4 billion in AI orders during the quarter and exited Q1 with a record $51.3 billion AI backlog, up from $43 billion at the end of fiscal Q4 FY26. Fiscal 2027 guidance calls for AI-optimized server revenue growth of approximately 144% year over year. Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) is not chasing spot orders. It is converting enterprise, neocloud, and sovereign customer demand into a multi-quarter revenue pipeline with over 5,000 AI customers now on its books.
While we acknowledge the potential of DELL to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than DELL and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
Click to continue reading and see Donald Trump Stock Portfolio: 5 Best AI and Tech Stock Picks in 2026.
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