These 3 large-cap AI stocks are still a bargain for long-term investors

The US stock market has seen a massive reallocation of capital toward artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure stocks in recent years.

Yet, a paradox has emerged – several of the sector’s most indispensable leaders are still trading at valuations that arguably discount their multi-year growth trajectories.

For disciplined investors, bargains are no longer found in distressed assets, but in high-scale names where market pricing fails to account for exceptional backlogs and supply-side constraints.

Three of such picks are Microsoft, Micron, and Nvidia – representing a triad of foundational plays spanning the cloud, memory, and compute layers that currently offer rare entry points.

A simple analysis of their forward earning multiple against projected capex cycles through the end of this decade presents a rather compelling case for long-term accumulation.

Microsoft (MSFT): capitalising on $625 billion backlog

Microsoft stock remains a cornerstone of the generative AI economy, primarily through Azure’s role as the essential computational muscle for enterprise-grade models.

Despite its market dominance, MSFT currently presents an attractive valuation anomaly – on an operating P/E basis that isolates core profitability from volatile investment gains – it is trading at levels reminiscent of the 2023 trough.

And that’s when the titan boasts a remarkable US$625 billion (approx. $1.1 trillion) commercial backlog, providing a level of revenue visibility that only a handful of its peers can possibly match.

As companies pivot from AI experimentation to full-scale deployment, MSFT’s ability to capture incremental margins through its OpenAI partnership positions it as a defensive growth play hiding in plain sight.

Micron (MU): leveraging an HBM supply deficit

Micron is undergoing a fundamental transformation from a cyclical commodity manufacturer to a high-margin provider of critical AI infrastructure.

According to the multinational, it’s entire high-bandwidth memory (HBM) supply is entirely sold out for 2026, with pricing already locked in under long-term agreements.

Plus, management sees HBM’s total addressable market (TAM) exploding from about US$35 billion (approx. $61.3 billion) last year to north of US$100 billion (approx. $175 billion) within the next three years.

Despite these secular tailwinds and mouth-watering year-on-year growth rate, MU shares are going for just 8.4x forward earnings.

This reflects a “cyclical stigma” that ignores the unusual durability of AI-driven memory demand, offering a deep-value entry into the hardware stack.

Nvidia (NVDA): a remarkable $1 trillion order book

Nvidia’s status as the world’s most valuable company often obscures its fundamental affordability.

While critics cite its meteoric rise, the market is currently pricing in a success plateau after 2026, a projection at odds with a massive US$1 trillion (approx. $1.8 trillion) order book for its Blackwell and Rubin architectures through 2027.

Having generated US$216 billion (approx. $378 billion) in revenue in the trailing twelve months, NVDA is entering an era of unprecedented scale.

Remarkably, the AI stock trades at about 26x forward earnings, representing a small premium only over the benchmark S&P 500 index.

Given Nvidia is monopolizing the compute layer of the next decade’s digital infrastructure, this valuation suggests it’s actually a “growth at a reasonable price” opportunity.