Key Points
- Credo Technology is emerging as a key AI connectivity and inference infrastructure company.
- Celestica is benefiting from surging demand tied to the AI data center buildout.
- Nu Holdings continues expanding digital banking adoption across Latin America at attractive valuation levels.
- Special Report: $7.7 billion in 90 days — and it all depends on ONE company
It seems like every investor is hoping to find the next NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). The graphics chipmaker has transformed into the backbone of the AI revolution, rewarding early believers with life-changing gains. But prior to the world’s Chat-GPT moment in October 2022, NVDA was just another cyclical chip stock, except for investors who had the foresight to see NVIDIA’s significance in the coming artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.
But by the time a stock becomes a household name, much of the easy money has already been made. That’s why the real opportunity lies in finding the next NVIDIA before the crowd arrives.
Finding these stocks means looking past the hype and speculative pre-revenue names, and focusing on profitable small-to-mid cap companies. In many cases, the growth has already started inflecting—but Wall Street hasn't fully caught up yet.
Here are three stocks that fit that description right now. What ties these three companies together is a shared dynamic. Each has already demonstrated real growth. Each operates in a market with a long runway ahead. And each remains, for the moment, underappreciated by the broader investing public.
Credo Technology: The AI Connectivity Dark Horse
Many retail investors are just learning about Credo Technology Group Inc. (NASDAQ: CRDO), but institutions have been buying the stock heavily in the last 12 months. That’s due to the company’s essential role in the AI inference trade.
Inference is the real-time responses that users get when making a query or running an AI agent inside an application.
It requires high-speed connectivity solutions, which Credo provides. The company reported record revenue of $407.1 million in Q3 of its fiscal year (FY) 2026.
That was up 201.5% year over year. Management has since raised its FY2027 growth guidance to above 50%. That's a remarkable forecast for a company already posting triple-digit growth.
The stock is up roughly 259% over the past year and has recently pushed above its consensus price target of $207.71. That would argue for staying away. But there are two reasons to stay bullish.
First, the company is expanding its portfolio to include optical DSPs and telemetry software, making it a broader AI infrastructure solution. Analysts are not likely to price in that larger addressable market.
Second, Credo reports earnings on June 1. If the company surprises to the upside, analysts are likely to raise their price targets.
Celestica: The AI Hardware Assembler Nobody Talks About
Celestica Inc. (NYSE: CLS) sits at a curious intersection: it's deeply embedded in the AI buildout, as evidenced by the fact that CLS is up roughly 4,000% in the last five years. And despite that growth, CLS has a consensus price target of $427.42, which suggests an upside of around 20%.
The company provides design, engineering, and manufacturing solutions for AI hyperscalers and cloud computing providers. That means it helps build the physical hardware that powers AI workloads. Revenue growth is projected at roughly 40% in both FY2026 and FY2027, driven by surging demand.
BNP Paribas named Celestica one of its top AI stocks for 2026. Yet despite that institutional recognition, Celestica remains one of the cheapest ways to play the data center buildout on a pure earnings basis. It trades at around 40x earnings, a premium to the S&P 500, but not an extreme valuation among technology stocks.
Nu Holdings: The Fintech King of Latin America
Imagine a digital bank with over 100 million customers, no legacy branch infrastructure dragging down margins, operating in markets where the majority of adults are still underserved by traditional finance. Now imagine that most U.S. investors have never heard of it.
That's Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU) in a nutshell, and maybe a good reason to own NU.
The fintech company operates in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, and has grown into the largest digital bank in the world by customer count. It carries none of the overhead that burdens legacy banks. That means no sprawling branch networks and no aging technology stacks. That gives it a structural cost advantage that could compound over time. The company recently became consistently profitable, and revenue continues to grow rapidly.
The broader opportunity is what makes Nu particularly compelling for long-term investors. Digital banking penetration in Latin America remains in its early innings. Brazil alone has a population of over 200 million, and financial inclusion in the region remains far from complete. Nu is essentially writing the playbook for digital-first banking in a part of the world that traditional financial institutions never fully served.
NU trades at just 15x forward earnings and has a consensus price target of $18.39, which is 40% above recent prices.
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