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5 AI Infrastructure Stocks Smart Money Is Buying Before the Next Surge

Authored by Ryan Hasson. Date Posted: 4/27/2026.

Not every AI infrastructure winner carries NVIDIA's (NASDAQ: NVDA) name recognition, Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) market cap, or Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) leadership. The buildout of the AI data center stack is creating significant value across companies and industries beneath the headline names, providing power systems, networking hardware, connectivity chips, server assemblies, and interconnects that make everything function.

While much of the market's attention remains fixed on the usual suspects, institutions have been steadily accumulating positions in a tier of companies growing faster, often with clearer visibility into forward demand than those above them. Here are five names worth paying attention to.

Vertiv Holdings: Powering the AI Data Center From the Inside Out

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Vertiv (NYSE: VRT) makes the critical power management and thermal cooling systems that keep AI data centers running. As AI chips like NVIDIA's Blackwell and Google's Ironwood generate much more heat per rack than prior generations, demand for Vertiv's solutions has become a durable structural tailwind in the infrastructure buildout.

The company joined the S&P 500 on March 23, a milestone that triggered index-driven buying and marked its evolution from a mid-cap industrial to a large-cap compounder. Its institutional ownership now stands at almost 90%, with nearly $11.1 billion in inflows over the prior 12 months versus about $9 billion in outflows during the same period.

Q1 2026 results, reported on April 22, reinforced the stock's momentum. Revenue of $2.65 billion was up 30% year over year. Adjusted operating profit rose 64%, and EPS of $1.17 beat the consensus estimate by $0.17. Management raised full-year guidance across key metrics, and the market took notice: VRT hit an all-time high of $330.30 on April 24, putting the stock up almost 100% year to date.

Following the earnings beat, multiple Wall Street firms raised their price targets, with JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley moving to $350, TD Cowen to $347, and RBC Capital to $356. The consensus rating is a Moderate Buy, and institutional conviction behind that view remains strong.

Arista Networks: The Networking Backbone Behind AI at Scale

Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET) is the dominant provider of high-speed networking switches and software for hyperscale data centers. Every major GPU cluster built at scale requires the low-latency, high-bandwidth networking fabric Arista supplies. It is one of the most important companies in the AI infrastructure stack, even if it doesn’t always get the retail attention its performance warrants. Over the last 12 months, the stock has risen almost 120%, with roughly 30% of those gains arriving this year.

The stock hit a fresh all-time high near $180 on April 24. The fundamentals support that move: management raised 2026 revenue guidance to 25% growth during its Q4 2025 release and set a $3.25 billion target for AI networking revenue for the year.

Analysts are overwhelmingly bullish, with a consensus Buy rating. JPMorgan raised its price target to $200 in April. Evercore added the stock to its Tactical Outperform list with a $200 target, and UBS also rates it a Buy with a $200 target. When Alphabet unveiled its Virgo Network—the new megascale fabric connecting hundreds of thousands of AI accelerators—Evercore called it an incremental positive for Arista. Ahead of its upcoming earnings in May, institutional investors have been net buyers, with almost $19 billion in inflows over the past 12 months versus about $15 billion in outflows.

Celestica: The AI Server Manufacturer Flying Under the Radar

Celestica (NYSE: CLS) may be the most compelling story on this list—and one that few retail investors have heard of. The company manufactures high-speed networking switches, AI servers, and storage systems for hyperscale data centers and serves a growing roster of hyperscaler customers. It is far more than a contract assembler: its design capabilities, supply chain depth, and manufacturing scale across 15 countries provide a competitive moat that is increasingly difficult to replicate.

Shares closed at $410.21 on April 24, up 4.75% on the day and setting a new all-time high. The 52-week range of $81.88 to $420.63 highlights how substantially the market has repriced the company over the past year. Over the past 12 months, the stock has surged about 360%.

Celestica is set to report earnings on April 27 after the market closes. Q1 2026 expectations are high: the consensus EPS estimate of $2.07 implies significant sequential growth. Ahead of that report, the consensus rating is a Moderate Buy, with the consensus price target implying roughly 9% downside from current levels. Given its recent surge, Celestica will need to deliver strong earnings and guidance to sustain further re-rating or at least maintain momentum.

Institutions are well positioned ahead of the print. Over the prior 12 months, they bought almost $8 billion of stock versus roughly $4.5 billion in outflows. While the stock may have outpaced fundamentals in the short term, that institutional backing should give investors confidence to weather a pullback.

Amphenol: The Connector Giant That Runs Through Everything

Amphenol (NYSE: APH) makes connectors, cables, and interconnect systems that physically link components within a data center. It’s not a name that generates a lot of retail excitement, but it is essential to the AI infrastructure stack. Most servers, switches, power distribution units, and storage systems contain Amphenol components, and as data center density rises to support AI workloads, connector content per rack increases substantially.

The numbers support that trend. The electrical components giant's stock has surged nearly 100% over the prior 12 months and about 10% this year. Q4 2025 revenue grew 49% year over year to $6.4 billion. Q1 2026 guidance calls for $6.9 billion to $7.0 billion in revenue, representing 43% to 45% year-over-year growth. The IT datacom segment—almost entirely driven by AI data center demand—represented 38% of total sales in Q4 and grew 110% year over year.

Q1 earnings are due on April 29. Ahead of the report, analysts maintain a consensus Moderate Buy rating across 15 ratings, with an average price target near $156.71, implying about 5% upside. Institutions have been steady accumulators, and institutional ownership sits near 97%. Over the prior 12 months, institutions put more than $41 billion into the stock versus $22.6 billion in outflows, producing a substantial net inflow.

Astera Labs: The Connectivity Chip Specialist Surging Into Earnings

Astera Labs (NASDAQ: ALAB) designs connectivity solutions that alleviate bandwidth and latency bottlenecks inside AI data centers. Its PCIe and CXL smart retimers, Ethernet smart cable modules, and COSMOS software platform are embedded in rack-scale infrastructure—the very systems hyperscalers are deploying for the largest AI training and inference clusters.

The stock jumped 7.7% on April 24 on renewed momentum tied to the Amazon-Anthropic 5-gigawatt Trainium capacity deal. Analysts have described the agreement as a decade-long tailwind for connectivity solutions like those Astera provides. Q4 2025 revenue of $270.6 million grew 91.8% year over year, beating consensus by a wide margin, and EPS of $0.58 surpassed the $0.51 estimate.

About 23 analysts cover the stock, and the consensus rating is Moderate Buy. Institutional interest is similarly positive: nearly 600 institutions purchased ALAB shares over the past 12 months, totaling roughly $7 billion in inflows, while just over 250 institutions sold about $4 billion.