Keith Speights, The Motley Fool
5 min read
In This Article:
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Google parent Alphabet is a leader in three key technologies of the future: AI, autonomous vehicles, and quantum computing.
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Meta Platforms is poised to profit from using AI to help advertisers, support business messaging, and power smart glasses.
Technology is always changing. Many of the hot new technologies of the past look like ancient relics now. Think two-way pagers, Palm Pilots, and iPods.
This fast rate of change makes it difficult to find tech stocks that you can buy and hold for a long time. However, I think two tech stocks are no-brainers to own over the next decade.
Artificial intelligence (AI). Autonomous vehicles. Quantum computing. Those are three technologies that could be highly disruptive, and highly lucrative, over the next 10 years. And I can think of one company that's a leader in each area: Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL).
Alphabet has been a top AI pioneer for years. Google researchers developed the "T" in ChatGPT -- a transformer architecture for AI models. Google Gemini 2.5 Pro is ranked by multiple AI leaderboards, including Chatbot Arena, WebDev Arena, and LMArena, as the best large language model (LLM). I'll be shocked if Alphabet isn't still one of the biggest AI winners one decade from now.
The company's Waymo unit is the leader in autonomous ride-hailing services (robotaxis). Waymo currently serves Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Austin, with plans to expand soon into Miami and Washington, D.C. Its technology has had 88% fewer crashes with serious injuries than human drivers. I predict that Waymo will be a huge moneymaker for Alphabet over the next few years.
Google is racing several rivals in the quantum computing space. However, it has already achieved significant advances in quantum error correction, a key step toward building large-scale, useful quantum computers. Although it's too early to know whether or not Google will be the biggest winner in quantum computing, the technology presents a huge opportunity for the company over the next decade.
But what about regulatory challenges to Google's business and the threat AI poses to Google Search? Those are legitimate concerns. However, I wouldn't bet against the company's ability to survive and thrive despite antitrust actions. I also think Google's efforts to adapt AI into its search engine have gone well so far.
Anyone who thought Meta Platforms' (NASDAQ: META) social media platforms wouldn't have staying power has been proved wrong. As of the first quarter of 2025, an average of 3.43 billion people used the company's Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp applications at least once per day, up 6% year over year.
