Daniel Sparks of The Motley Fool names Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Broadcom as AI-themed stocks to buy and hold for the next decade, arguing that profitable incumbents and infrastructure suppliers can fund multi-year AI buildouts. The article leans on Meta's first-quarter results, which independent filings confirm: revenue rose about 33 percent year over year to roughly $56.3 billion, with operating income near $22.9 billion. Meta also lifted its 2026 capital-spending guidance to $125 billion to $145 billion, from $115 billion to $135 billion, citing higher component costs and additional data-center investment. The piece is an investment opinion column rather than company or market news, but the underlying capex and earnings figures are a useful gauge of how much large platforms are committing to AI infrastructure.
What happened
Daniel Sparks of The Motley Fool published a column naming Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Broadcom as three AI stocks to buy and hold for the next decade. The thesis is that companies with large, cash-generative core businesses, along with key infrastructure suppliers, can sustain expensive multi-year AI investment. The piece supports the case with Meta's recent results.
The Meta numbers
Independent filings and reporting corroborate the figures cited. Meta's first-quarter 2026 revenue rose about 33 percent year over year to roughly $56.3 billion, with family-of-apps advertising revenue up 33 percent to about $55 billion; ad impressions rose 19 percent and average price per ad rose 12 percent. Operating income was about $22.9 billion, a 41 percent operating margin. Meta also raised its 2026 capital-expenditure guidance to a range of $125 billion to $145 billion, from $115 billion to $135 billion, citing higher component pricing and additional data-center costs. When the raise was announced, Meta shares fell sharply as investors weighed the spending.
Why it matters for data teams
The picks highlight two sides of the AI economy: hyperscale deployers such as Meta and Microsoft that consume and serve large models, and suppliers such as Broadcom that provide chips and networking. Capital-spending guidance is a practical leading indicator of compute capacity, data-center buildout, and downstream demand for accelerators, which affects availability and pricing for teams that rent or buy AI infrastructure.
What to watch
Useful signals include quarterly revenue attribution to AI products, changes in capex guidance, and gross-margin trends as a proxy for whether investment is pressuring profitability. For infrastructure suppliers, order books and channel demand are leading indicators. Advertising and antitrust regulation in the U.S. and Europe remains a material external factor for ad-driven platforms.
Caveat
This is an opinion column framing long-term holds, not company news, a model release, or a regulatory action. The investment thesis is the author's; the earnings and capex figures, however, are confirmed by Meta's filings and multiple outlets.
Scoring Rationale #
This is a Motley Fool opinion column recommending three large-cap stocks as long-term AI holds, not a technical development, deal, or regulatory action. The Meta earnings and capex figures it cites are verifiable and useful as an AI-infrastructure signal, but the AI angle is tangential to an investment-advice format, which places it in the minor band.
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