Morgan Stanley Identifies 24 AI Stocks Resilient to Capex Slowdown

Morgan Stanley identified 24 AI infrastructure stocks positioned to maintain growth even if capital expenditure from hyperscalers slows. In an October 15 note, the bank projected that year-over-year capex growth will decelerate from nearly 100% in 2026 to 60% in 2027 and further to 14% in 2028.

Analysts selected these companies based on their ability to expand market share or their strong pricing power. This power stems from ongoing supply chain bottlenecks in GPUs, memory, optical components, and power. While higher financing costs have raised concerns about the durability of the AI boom, the bank noted that Wall Street has historically underestimated the scale of compute cycles.

Equity strategist Nicholas Lentini expects bottlenecks to persist as the race to build data centers continues. He noted that the willingness of buyers to pay depends heavily on time-to-market and expects these companies to see upward revenue and earnings revisions from the AI capex boom even if hyperscaler revisions moderate.