Nine of the 10 best-performing S&P 500 stocks over the past decade trace to one theme, the buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure. There is also one clear winner out of the top 10: Nvidia.
Nvidias 10-year total return is near 13,589%, more than double the next-closest, AMD, at close to 6,000%. The other eight names span chipmakers, network gear, and one HVAC contractor.
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The AI Common Thread
The top 10 best performers from the last 10 years:
Nvidia (NVDA) — +13,817%
AMD (AMD) — +6,099%
Micron (MU) — +5,486%
Comfort Systems (FIX) — +5,157%
Arista Networks (ANET) — +3,762%
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Lam Research (LRCX) — +3,099%
Tesla (TSLA) — +2,545%
Lumentum (LITE) — +2,440%
KLA Corp (KLAC) — +2,401%
Seagate (STX) — +2,346%
Nvidia, AMD, Micron (MU), Lam Research (LRCX), and KLA Corp (KLAC) all supply chips or the equipment to make them. That equipment builds the servers inside AI data centers.
Arista Networks (ANET) sells networking switches for those same facilities. Lumentum (LITE) makes optical parts that move data between server racks. Seagate (STX), meanwhile, supplies the storage drives used in AI training clusters.
Comfort Systems (FIX), in contrast, benefits from a different angle. The mechanical and electrical contractors backlog climbed toward $12 billion as hyperscalers race to build and cool new data centers. That gives it AI exposure without selling a single chip.
Tesla (TSLA), however, is the outlier. Its return leans more on electric vehicle demand than AI infrastructure. Elon Musks push into self-driving and robotics does, however, add an AI angle of its own.
Two Years, Most of the Gains
Much of this run happened recently, not evenly across the decade. Nvidias market value rose from about $418 billion to over $4.5 trillion since the AI boom began in November 2022.
A similar acceleration shows up across the list, as hyperscaler spending on AI accelerated over the past two years.
Whether that pace continues depends on hyperscalers sustaining current construction schedules. JPMorgan analysts estimate that roughly 60% of data center capacity planned for 2027 has yet to break ground.
That gap could keep this group of stocks in focus through the back half of the decade.