These 8 stocks could form the backbone of AI as chips get more powerful

By Britney Nguyen and Emily Bary

Beyond obvious AI plays like Nvidia, experts see opportunity in shares of infrastructure companies, some of which remain cheap

Companies across industries have pivoted their businesses to get in on the AI wave.

Nvidia talked up its upcoming Vera Rubin lineup this week, touting chips that are more powerful and energy-efficient than predecessors.

But just because chips are more efficient doesn't mean they actually use less energy. Since the chips will be so much more capable than before, they'll require even more power, adding to the electricity crunch that already faces the big artificial-intelligence players.

More from MarketWatch: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers some good news for investors at CES

"A couple of years ago, it was all about the chips being the gating factor," Matthew Sallee, head of investments at Tortoise Capital, told MarketWatch. "That has pivoted, and now it's really about getting electricity."

His firm, which runs funds including the Tortoise AI Infrastructure ETF TCAI, sees big opportunities investing in various infrastructure elements that form the backbone of AI. Technologies like fiber and cooling products may not be as scarce as power, but they're in high demand as companies look to retrofit older data centers and build redundancies into their operations so they can avoid downtime.

Here are eight stocks to play various energy and infrastructure trends underpinning the AI boom.

Read: This could be a better - and safer - way into the AI trade in 2026

Investing beyond the obvious AI plays

Some investors see AI as the next industrial revolution - and Sallee suggests playing the theme through shares of a century-old company. He likes Modine Manufacturing (MOD), which started out making car radiators but has pivoted its expertise, in part, to provide liquid-cooling offerings for data centers.

Modine shares haven't done much over the past year, and they've gotten off to a rough start in 2026 thanks to commentary from Nvidia (NVDA) suggesting that "chillers" like Modine's won't be necessary with its new chips. Sallee says those fears are overblown: "Chips will continue to get more efficient but also more powerful, leading to total cooling needs growing," he said.

While Modine shares have lost 11% since Monday's close, Sallee thinks part of that decline came from investors taking profits after a more-than-500% three-year run. He sees "significant equity upside" since the stock trades at 11.5 times next year's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda), while cash flow could grow at a midteens annual rate.

See also: Nvidia had a chilling effect on these power stocks. Are investors being too harsh?

He's also a fan of bitcoin-mining companies IREN (IREN) and TeraWulf (WULF), which have undergone transformations of their own. Like CoreWeave (CRWV), the companies have realized they can translate bitcoin-mining capacity into data-center work.

With bitcoin, "you mine when the power is cheap and you don't when it's not," Sallee said. But with data-center hosting, he noted, you have to operate 24/7 - which means the companies have to spend up on retrofitting their operations for the new reality.

Another issue in the data-center buildout has been the availability of space. IREN has available capacity today, and is building more from land and power deals it has secured thanks to its head start as a crypto miner, IREN Chief Commercial Officer Kent Draper told MarketWatch in November.

The stocks look cheap to Sallee, who pointed out that they still trade at single-digit multiples of enterprise value to next year's estimated Ebitda, even after strong recent rallies. "To the extent that they can sign contracts with hyperscalers" or other parties, the companies have "massive rerating potential," meaning their stocks could come to fetch higher multiples.

See also: Big Tech needs a staggering $1.5 trillion to fund the AI boom. This is the complex playbook it's using to get it.

Among power plays, Sallee likes Williams (WMB), a natural-gas company whose pipeline supplies much of the East Coast with natural gas. As it turns out, their compressions can also produce power - and by stacking many of them up, they've found a business opportunity in serving data centers.

"The hyperscalers are willing to spend the money and basically guarantee their revenues, and they're earning tremendous returns," he said.

Jefferies analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith sees Williams's stock as his top midstream pick for the year, writing Friday that he is "increasingly bullish" on the company's power-generation business. "Power innovation remains in the early innings," Dumoulin-Smith wrote.

Meanwhile, ProPetro Holding (PUMP) is an oilfield-service company whose stock trades at 5.5 times next year's enterprise value to Ebitda. There aren't great comparisons among peers given the unique business mix, and while the stock doesn't quite deserve to trade at the 15.5 multiple of generator company Generac, "we see significant rerating potential based off growth and multiple improvement as they execute on growing the power business," Sallee said.

As interest grows in alternative energy sources such as nuclear power, independent, unregulated utilities providers such as Constellation Energy (CEG) and Vistra (VST) are focused on optimizing existing facilities, Sallee noted. Constellation is his favorite, catching his eye in 2022 as the company seemed set to benefit from the nuclear-production tax credit, which aims to support clean energy. The credit implements a price floor, guaranteeing a minimum price for electricity, he explained.

Because Constellation is unregulated and selling into the wholesale market, the credit guarantees rates that the company gets for nuclear energy, and it has "significantly derisked their business," according to Sallee.

He's paying attention to reserve margins, a metric that captures extra power-generation capacity beyond the peak load. "It basically is a measurement of, 'Can we keep the lights on when conditions get extreme?'" Sallee said.

Looking forward a few years from now, Sallee said reserve margins are projected to fall to levels that could lead the major regional transmission associations in Texas and along the East Coast to pay for extra power to keep the electricity on, likely benefiting pricing trends.

And while nuclear-energy investors got some excitement Friday in the form of a new deal between Oklo (OKLO) and Meta Platforms (META), it's worth thinking about all that will be required as nuclear energy becomes more in demand thanks to AI. For instance, there are still big questions about how and where to store nuclear waste, and Amentum (AMTM) is a company that plays into that.

"The nuclear-waste business has long-duration Department of Energy contracts where it operates and cleans up legacy nuclear sites," involving everything from waste characterization, to transportation, to permanent disposal, Sallee said.

See more: Oklo's stock surges. Why Meta's new nuclear bet is so significant.

-Britney Nguyen -Emily Bary

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01-10-26 0730ET

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