A roller-coaster 2025 for tech stocks is at least pointed in the right direction.
The technology sector (and most of the rest of the market) was sent into a tailspin earlier this year amid America’s ramped-up trade aggression against the rest of the world. But a temporary respite for some of the biggest tariff threats have helped to soothe investors into buying back in.
That makes taking time to analyze tech stocks easier than it was, but hardly easy. Technology companies live in a market environment that’s in seemingly endless flux. As they try to harness “the next big thing,” they’re also locked in R&D struggles trying to discover “the next next big thing.” On the upside, the stickiest technology trends have enough meat on the bone to feed dozens of growing stars and established names alike. Just remember: Historically, even the most celebrated tech stocks have ridden waves of hype, only to face sharp downturns from being too slow to the next trend.
So how do you separate the best tech stocks to buy now from the fad stocks trading on short-lived news trends? Today, I’ll walk you through our updated list of technology companies that Wall Street is excited about.
Disclaimer: This article does not constitute individualized investment advice. These securities appear for your consideration and not as investment recommendations. Act at your own discretion.
Editor’s Note: Tabular data presented in this article are up-to-date as of July 2, 2025.
Featured Financial Products
Table of Contents
Why Invest in the Tech Sector?
Many investors are interested in top tech stocks for good reason. Disruptive technologies can sometimes lead to dramatic revenue growth, and dramatic gains in a firm’s stock price as a result.
In fact, technology companies sometimes chase that revenue growth for years without ever focusing on bottom-line profits. Some of the best-performing tech (and “tech-esque”) stocks in history include Amazon.com (AMZN) and Meta Platforms (META), which both prioritized ramping up their long-term scale over short-term profitability.
And look where they are now. Both are among the biggest companies on the planet, outperforming the market by wide margins over the last several years.
This is why many investors look for growth stocks within the tech sector and tech-adjacent companies. It’s not for the short-term profits or dividends, but rather the hopes of a “moonshot” stock that grows exponential revenue growth in short order, delivering life-changing profits to its investors in the process.
The Best Tech Stocks to Invest In
Some of the best-performing tech stocks are very recognizable names. But before you buy any of them, don’t forget that investing is fundamentally about the future. That means learning about the product pipeline and R&D beyond what’s on the surface.
Leading tech firms are often the parent company of lesser-known products or services that could be just as interesting. Particularly when it comes to entrenched mega-cap tech stocks, their future potential depends on revenue streams that have yet to be fully realized yet—not the big-name products consumers currently use.
The tech stocks here are listed in reverse order of market capitalization (so, from smallest to largest).
9. CyberArk Software
- Industry: Cybersecurity
- Market capitalization: $19.7 billion
- Dividend yield: N/A
Cybersecurity has been a growing theme for decades, lifting the fortunes of companies that specialize in it and prompting some larger tech conglomerates to add security capabilities to their repertoire.
CyberArk Software (CYBR) is in the latter group. The company offers a host of software-based identity security solutions and services—including risk-based credential security and session management, secure access for third-party vendors, endpoint privilege security, and secrets management, among others—in the U.S. and across several continents.
The company’s bottom line has been growing like a weed for years, and analysts expect much of the same going forward. 2025 estimates are for 30%-plus revenue growth, with 20% or so expected in 2026.
Related: 7 Best Schwab ETFs to Buy [Build Your Core for Cheap]
“CYBR remains one of our top cyber names to own heading into the rest of 2025 as the company continues to capitalize on its strong demand for its entire [Privileged Access Management]/Identity Security portfolio,” says Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, who rates the stock at Outperform (equivalent of Buy). “Demand for its solutions continues to increase from new and existing logos as customers’ interest in buying [multiple] products continues [to increase].”
Ives is one of a whopping 37 Buy ratings on the stock, which greatly outnumber a pair of Holds and no Sells.
Just note that CyberArk isn’t yet profitable on a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) basis; however, Wall Street expects big jumps in adjusted earnings over the next two years.
Do you want to get serious about saving and planning for retirement? Sign up for Retire With Riley, Young and the Invested’s free retirement planning newsletter.
8. Synopsys
— Industry: Semiconductor software
— Market capitalization: $81.3 billion
— Dividend yield: N/A
Synopsys (SNPS), like a couple other stocks on this list, deals in semiconductors, though in a different way than your typical chip stock. Synopsis is the market share leader in electronic design automation (EDA), which helps silicon firms design and manufacture semiconductors. Its solutions include design, verification, intellectual property, and more, as well as programs and services that improve the security, quality, and compliance of various software.
In short, though, as the semiconductor industry goes, so goes Synopsys—which has largely been a positive trait.
Related: 7 Best Value Stocks to Buy for 2025
“Innovation in the EDA industry began more than 30 years ago and in that time, the top two vendors have amassed broad technology portfolios through organic investment and M&A,” say Stifel analysts, who rate Synopsys’ shares at Buy. “While we view both of the large EDA companies as likely beneficiaries of secular growth drivers, we prefer SNPS at this time given what we view as a more attractive relative valuation.”
Synopsis isn’t immune to America’s trade volleys, however. In late May, the company was forced to suspend its 2025 guidance after it “received a letter from the Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Department of Commerce informing Synopsys of new export restrictions related to China.” It’s a difficult situation that could theoretically close off one of Synopsys’s markets entirely, and has added another wrinkle in its attempted acquisition of Ansys (ANSS).
However, SNPS shares have thus far shaken off any concerns, and Wall Street analysts remain overwhelmingly optimistic in their stock ratings.
Related: The 9 Best Vanguard ETFs for 2025 [Build a Low-Cost Portfolio]
7. Palo Alto Networks
— Industry: Cybersecurity
— Market capitalization: $131.2 billion
— Dividend yield: N/A
In an age of persistent cybersecurity and hacking concerns, Palo Alto Networks (PANW) stands out as a company with both a reliable customer base as well as the near certainty of increased revenue coming its way across the coming years.
But investors might have to deal with short-term turbulence as the cybersecurity darling makes a massive change to the way it does business.
Palo Alto is migrating to a security platform approach, and it’s banking on comped services to attract customers to it. That, as well as a slowdown in business with the federal government, led the company to lower full-year billings and revenue guidance at the start of last year, which tanked shares, shaking out at least a few bulls in the process. But PANW recovered throughout the rest of 2024, and while 2025 has been up and down, the stock is sitting on decent gains heading into the year’s second half.
Related: The 9 Best ETFs for Beginners
By and large, the pros remain bullish on Palo Alto’s longer-term prospects, too.
“While we have been concerned by the challenges Palo Alto has faced with its cloud CNAPP [cloud-native application protection platform] portfolio, we believe the company’s repositioning to try to lead the market into AI security may prove to be an even larger growth opportunity than that provided by the cloud,” say William Blair analysts Jonathan Ho and Garrett Burkham, who rate shares at Outperform. “We believe the company is making large bets to capture mindshare (as it did with cloud) in the early stages of the AI security platform journey. If successful, Palo Alto, through XSIAM [(Extended Security Intelligence and Automation Management], could sit at a critical intersection point of many of the tools needed to power an emerging AI platform.”
Also worth noting: Palo Alto’s announced in April that it would acquire privately held Protect AI, an AI security solutions provider, for an undisclosed price.
“Protect AI’s focus on governance fits in with what Palo Alto Networks already does around AI access, runtime, inline and posture management,” says Truist Managing Director Joel P. Fishbein Jr., who rates PANW at Buy.
Featured Financial Products
6. Shopify
— Industry: E-commerce
— Market capitalization: $149.3 billion
— Dividend yield: N/A
Shopify (SHOP) is an e-commerce infrastructure company that helps small and mid-sized businesses market and sell products through various digital sales channels. The basics include web and mobile storefronts, but SHOP also supports “omnichannel” integration with brick-and-mortar locations to manage inventory, as well as analytics and reporting to maximize profitability and customer loyalty.
We all know the potential of e-commerce thanks to the success of Amazon. But SHOP is concerned with every other merchant out there that also has the potential to reach new customers in a digital age.
Related: 10 Best Dividend Stocks to Buy [Steady Eddies]
Analysts believe SHOP will grow its top line by more than 20% in each of the next two years. And while earnings growth is expected to moderate significantly to about 12% in 2025, it’s projected to accelerate again next year, to nearly 30%.
Like the rest of the market, Shopify dropped like a rock earlier this year, though the company generated some of that pessimism on its own with light financial guidance. At the time, William Blair analysts (Outperform) called the post-earnings selloff a “buying opportunity,” adding that “although the stock could take a pause in the near term, we expect shares to move higher once investors get more visibility into the company’s growth and FCF trajectory.” SHOP is now back in the black for the year, and analysts continue to like what the stock has to offer.
“Shopify has established itself as a fast-growing, pure play SaaS Commerce application vendor that is taking share of retailer technology spend,” say Oppenheimer analysts, who rate the stock at Outperform. “We think Shopify is well led by a visionary and respected management team and are confident in its multi-year growth potential.”
5. Accenture
— Industry: IT services and consulting
— Market capitalization: $186.6 billion
— Dividend yield: 2.0%
Professional services specialist Accenture (ACN) has made a name for itself by providing “DevOps” blueprints to top companies around the world. This unique approach involves high technological improvements such as custom software development, systems upgrades, and data migration to ultimately provide improved service and efficiencies across complex organizations.
Whether it’s helping a firm get smarter about its customers through data analytics and artificial intelligence or simply consulting on how to trim the IT fat after a complex acquisition, Accenture is a firm that the biggest brands in the world turn to to solve their tech problems.
Related: 9 Best Dividend Stocks for Beginners
And with a recently announced team-up with Amazon to provide generative AI solutions to clients, Accenture is working hard to ensure it has the right tools for the future as well as for today.
“We believe Accenture remains a market leader in developing and investing in next-generation capabilities, and the company’s global presence and scale remain strategic differentiators that are not easily replicated,” say William Blair analysts, who rate the stock at Outperform. “We remain positive on Accenture’s story and the intrinsic value, given a structurally strong business, stable balance sheet, and positive free cash flows that are supplemented by a comprehensive capital return program that includes share repurchases and dividends.”
Related: 5 Best Fidelity Retirement Funds [Low-Cost + Long-Term]
4. Broadcom
— Industry: Semiconductors
— Market capitalization: $1.3 trillion
— Dividend yield: 0.9%
Broadcom (AVGO) is one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies. It designs, develops, manufactures, and supplies semiconductor and infrastructure software products for a wide variety of uses, including (but hardly limited to) artificial intelligence (AI), data centers, networking, wireless, storage, and industrial automation.
The company has been an innovator in its own right, but you can also chalk up much of its scale to a history of aggressive merger-and-acquisition (M&A) activity. The company—itself the product of a 2016 merger between Broadcom Corporation and Avago Technologies (hence the AVGO ticker)—has swallowed up the likes of LSI Corporation, Brocade, CA Technologies, VMware, and Symantec’s enterprise security business.
Related: 10 Best Fidelity Funds to Buy in 2025
Regardless of how it got there, the resulting entity is one of Wall Street’s most beloved chip stocks.
“We believe AVGO has one of the most strategically and financially attractive business models in semiconductors,” say Oppenheimer analysts, who rate the stock at Outperform. Among the reasons they love Broadcom are a “sustained competitive advantage in the high-end filter market, a “sticky” non-mobile business, efficiently managed manufactury, and substantial earnings and free cash flow growth.
That last point is the main driver behind the company’s rapidly growing dividend, which has exploded by 80% in just the past five years alone. That puts AVGO not just among our favorite tech stocks, but also the best dividend stocks for beginners.
Related: 11 Best Stock Screeners & Stock Scanners
3. Amazon
— Industry: Online retail/cloud
— Market capitalization: $2.3 trillion
— Dividend yield: N/A
Amazon (AMZN) dominates the retail world. It is a one-stop shop for nearly anything you could want. And it has redefined customer expectations—they were a pioneer in two-day, one-day and even same-day shipping.
And yet, it’s also so much more than that.
Amazon is also the world’s biggest cloud provider through AWS, it’s an entertainment company through its Amazon Prime service, and it’s one of the biggest advertising companies, behind only giants Google and Facebook. AMZN makes for such an attractive stock because it’s supported by a diversified business with ample opportunities to enter new markets and disrupt well-seated industry incumbents.
Related: 5 Best Vanguard Retirement Funds [Start Saving More, for Less]
Right now, AWS remains the workhorse.
“No question, we could well do without the (tariff) uncertainty,” says HSBC Analyst Christopher Johnen, who rates shares at Buy. “But fundamentally, we continue to see AMZN as exceptionally well placed and exposed to all the right structural themes. While our ‘harvesting the fruits of past investment’ theme has taken a tariff hit, we don’t see signs of a fading moat. In terms of value, we continue to argue AWS matters above all else.”
That said, Truist analyst Youssef Squali, who also sees AMZN as a Buy, points to the potential of yet another new business in the Amazon constellation.
“Project Kuiper, Amazon’s emerging satellite internet offering, is likely to become incrementally more important to the Amazon growth story as the company accelerates the pace of satellite launches over the next 12-18 months, and begins commercialization by the end of 2025,” Squali says. “Project Kuiper is ready for launch—we believe it could deliver annual revenue of $6B by 2030 against an investment of $13-15B.”
Do you want to get serious about saving and planning for retirement? Sign up for Retire With Riley, Young and the Invested’s free retirement planning newsletter.
2. Microsoft
— Industry: Enterprise software
— Market capitalization: $3.7 trillion
— Dividend yield: 0.7%
Microsoft (MSFT) is a dominant tech stock that has seen amazing growth over the past few decades. But despite that, as well as a more than $3 trillion market cap, MSFT still shows no signs of slowing down.
The average person knows Microsoft for its iconic Windows and Office productivity software for personal computers, as well as its Xbox gaming console and related software, which is only getting more dominant after a nearly $70 billion deal to acquire game studio Activision Blizzard (ATVI).
Related: Best Fidelity Retirement Funds for a 401(k) Plan
But Microsoft also is a major player in cloud computing, via its still-growing Azure cloud services, and an emerging titan in artificial intelligence—for better or worse.
“CEO Satya Nadella sees [generative AI] as a rare change to a fundamental computing paradigm, and Microsoft is moving to exploit the opportunities opened up by Gen AI as quickly as possible, as demand currently outstrips the supply of its cloud services,” says Argus Research analyst Joseph Bonner (Buy). “However, the market, fickle as ever, may be concerned about the ramping costs and investments in Microsoft’s GenAI infrastructure as it races against competitors Alphabet and Meta, as well as a host of smaller AI startups, to develop the new GenAI models/applications that may drive the emerging GenAI market as a whole.”
Revenue and profit projections for the current fiscal year are currently in the low double digits, with pros believing the stock can indeed keep getting bigger and delivering profits for its shareholders.
Related: 8 Best-in-Class Bond Funds to Buy
“Management remains laser-focused on optimizing margins across all business segments to help offset AI investment needs,” say William Blair analysts, who rate the stock at Outperform. “For full year fiscal 2025, despite capital expenditures expected to be up in comparison to fiscal 2024, operating margin is expected to increase slightly year-over-year while operating income is expected to grow double digits.”
Featured Financial Products
1. Nvidia
— Industry: Semiconductors
— Market capitalization: $3.8 trillion
— Dividend yield: < 0.1%
Nvidia (NVDA) is the world’s top chip stock thanks to its dominance in semiconductors that are used in cutting-edge technologies. Applications for this firm’s hardware include self-driving cars, cryptocurrency mining, and other in-demand and growth-oriented areas of the 21st century economy.
But No. 1 with a bullet is the artificial intelligence market.
Related: 13 Best Stock & Investment Newsletters for Inbox Alpha
“NVDA remains *the* AI company owing to its culture of innovation, ecosystem of incumbency, and massive investment in software, pre-trained models, and services,” says Truist analyst William Stein (Buy). “We see NVDA’s leadership as driven less by the raw performance of its chips, and more by its culture of innovation, ecosystem of incumbency, and massive investment in software, AI models, and services, that we believe makes its chips a default choice for most engineers building AI systems.”
This specialization has resulted in red-hot growth at Nvidia—a fire that’s only expected to continue burning. Analysts see revenue growth averaging 40% annually over the next two years, and long-term earnings growth at a clip of 33%. Indeed, NVDA sits on our list of the market’s best growth stocks right now, too.
Related: 7 Best High-Yield, High-Quality Dividend Stocks to Buy
Is Technology the Best Sector in the Stock Market?
Technology stocks regularly are among the best-performing stocks on Wall Street, and they historically beat the broader S&P 500 index. But that should not be misunderstood to mean that the tech sector is a sure thing. According to Pensions & Investments, the technology sector slumped by 28.2% in 2022—more than 10 percentage points worse than the broader market.
In other words, there are lots of reasons to like technology stocks and the tech sector. But there’s no such thing as a sure thing when it comes to investing.
Are There Any Downsides to Investing in Tech Companies?
Many tech companies can be quite volatile as they pursue their long-term potential, often at the cost of short-term profits—or even short-term stock performance. One of the most common downsides of investing in tech stocks is that they can move up and down much more dramatically than sleepy sectors such as utility stocks or consumer staples.
That’s also what makes them popular stocks to buy, however. Those big moves are great when they are in an investor’s favor. Just be aware that the big downside of investing in tech companies is … well, the potential for bigger downsides.
Related: 7 Best Vanguard Dividend Funds [Low-Cost Income]
Want to talk more about your financial goals or concerns? Our services include comprehensive financial planning, investment management, estate planning, taxes, and more! Schedule a call with Riley to discuss what you need, and what we can do for you.
Related: 13 Best Long-Term Stocks to Buy and Hold Forever
As even novice investors probably know, funds—whether they’re mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs)—are the simplest and easiest ways to invest in the stock market. But the best long-term stocks also offer many investors a way to stay “invested” intellectually—by following companies they believe in. They also provide investors with the potential for outperformance.
So if you’re looking for a starting point for your own portfolio, look no further. Check out our list of the best long-term stocks for buy-and-hold investors.
Related: 10 Best Monthly Dividend Stocks for Frequent, Regular Income
The vast majority of American dividend stocks pay regular, reliable payouts—and they do so at a more frequent clip (quarterly) than dividend stocks in most other countries (typically every six months or year).
Still, if you’ve ever thought to yourself, “it’d sure be nice to collect these dividends more often,” you don’t have to look far. While they’re not terribly common, American exchanges boast dozens of monthly dividend stocks.
Please Don’t Forget to Like, Follow and Comment
Did you find this article helpful? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment with the box on the left-hand side of the screen and share your thoughts.
Also, do you want to stay up-to-date on our latest content?
1. Follow us by clicking the [+ Follow] button above,
2. Subscribe to Retire With Riley, our free weekly retirement planning newsletter, and
3. Give the article a Thumbs Up on the top-left side of the screen.
4. And lastly, if you think this information would benefit your friends and family, don’t hesitate to share it with them!
