MillionaireMaker

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the megatrend of this decade and is fast transforming the enterprise landscape. According to Gartner, global AI spending will be nearly $1.5 trillion in calendar year 2025.

While the AI opportunity is massive, not every AI player can prove to be an exceptional business in the long run. Companies with proven technologies and well-established customer bases stand a better chance of sustaining high top-line and bottom-line growth rates in the coming years.

Here’s why Palantir Technologies (PLTR -0.31%) and Snowflake (SNOW 0.18%) are two companies that could deliver strong returns, turning disciplined investors into millionaires over the long run.

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Palantir

Palantir has evolved from a pure data analytics company to a full-stack AI enterprise platform. The company’s software solutions are now used in mission-critical operations by both government and commercial clients.

In the second quarter, the company’s revenue soared 48% year over year to over $1 billion. The U.S. continues to be the biggest market, with revenue growing 68% to $733 million. The company also closed a record $2.27 billion in total contract value, up 140% over the year-ago period.

A significant part of this growth is driven by the rapid enterprise adoption of the company’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). AIP combines large language model reasoning with the company’s proprietary ontology framework (used to relate physical assets to digital twins) to solve complex, real-time business challenges.

Palantir is also focused on helping clients scale through automation. The company has added new tools and features to AIP, such as AI Forward Deployed Engineer (software engineer) and AI Workbench, to automate application development tasks and develop, debug, and automate workflows.

The company has also introduced the Ontology-as-a-Code feature to enable clients to leverage ontology in their preferred integrated development environments, tools, and workflows.

Palantir’s shares are currently trading at a very aggressive valuation of over 123 times sales. Although not an ideal scenario, this premium reflects Wall Street’s confidence in the company’s future growth trajectory.

Analysts expect Palantir’s revenue to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 39.9% from $2.86 billion in fiscal 2024 to $11 billion in fiscal 2028. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) are also expected to grow at a CAGR of 40.7% from $0.41 in fiscal 2024 to $1.61 in fiscal 2028. Hence, the valuation can continue to remain elevated for several more years.

Considering these factors, Palantir can prove to be a smart pick in 2025.

Snowflake

Snowflake is transitioning from a cloud data warehouse to an AI data cloud (unified platform comprising AI technologies, data, and applications) for enterprises.

In Q2 of fiscal 2026 (ended July 31, 2025), product revenue grew 32% year over year to $1.09 billion, while non-GAAP operating margin reached 11%. The company had $6.9 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPO) at the end of Q2, up 33% on a year-over-year basis. With a large base of renewing customers, contracted billings, and large deals in the pipeline, the company has strong revenue visibility for the next few years. Snowflake’s healthy net-revenue retention rate of 125% also demonstrates its success in cross-selling and upselling to existing clients.

AI has become the key growth engine, influencing almost half of all new customer wins in Q2. AI is also powering nearly 25% of the deployed use cases. Currently, over 6,100 accounts use Snowflake’s AI capabilities on a weekly basis for various activities such as data migrations, analytics, and workflow transformations.

Snowflake has further strengthened its position in enterprise AI with Snowflake Intelligence, which enables enterprises to interact directly with their data and also build intelligent agents. The company has introduced Cortex AI SQL, which enables users to leverage AI models directly within SQL databases. This removes the need to move data between applications and unifies analytics and AI.

The company is also committed to improving performance and efficiency. The company launched Gen2 data warehouses , which offer double the performance in extracting insights and managing data without increasing costs. The company’s new OpenFlow capability allows enterprises to bring unstructured, structured, batch, or real-time streaming data into the Snowflake platform.

All these AI-powered capabilities have accelerated the company’s customer acquisition pace. Snowflake added 533 new customers in Q2, including 15 Global 2000 companies. The company now is trading at 19.4 times sales, which is not cheap for a loss-making company. However, the premium seems justified when we consider its accelerating AI adoption, expanding customer base, and robust backlog.

Hence, the payoff in investing in Snowflake can be impressive despite its elevated valuation levels.

With shares up 2,500% over the last 12 months, Quantum Computing (QUBT 1.49%) is sure to attract the attention of growth-focused investors. The stock is surging based on industrywide optimism. But is this rally driven by fundamentals or hype? Let’s dig deeper into the pros and cons of Quantum Computing, also known as QCi, to decide if the shares are a solid long-term buy.

What is special about quantum computing?

Quantum computing is a branch of computer science and physics that aims to create devices capable of solving the world’s most difficult problems exponentially faster than today’s fastest supercomputers. And we aren’t talking 30 minutes faster; we are talking over a million years faster. If the technology works, it will allow humans to do things that were previously impossible with current technology.

It doesn’t take a supercomputer to see the vast commercial opportunities that viable quantum computers could unlock. Analysts expect them to help rapidly discover new pharmaceutical drug candidates and chemical structures, and even help train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Quantum Computing (QCi) aims to position itself on the picks-and-shovels side of this opportunity, supplying hardware products like chips, sensors, and communication devices. It also claims to have the first of its kind foundry for processing thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), a next-generation material useful for advanced telecommunication platforms.

QCi’s TFLN foundry is located in Tempe, Arizona, and its made-in-America approach could attract government support amid the accelerating technology arms race between the U.S. and China.

But what about the fundamentals?

While cutting-edge technologies often sound exciting, it is essential to remember that they won’t always translate to commercial success, especially in the near term. Furthermore, the start-ups with the most valuable patents and processes are often acquired by larger companies or kept private to maximize returns for their owners. So when small speculative companies like QCi go public, it’s important to ask why.

Image source: Getty Images.

The company’s second-quarter earnings report gives some clues about the pressure it is under. Revenue collapsed 67% year over year to just $61,000 (that’s less than the median annual salary of a U.S. tech worker). Meanwhile, operating costs are spiraling out of control, with research and development more than doubling to $5.98 million.

As a speculative tech company, QCi probably can’t trim its research and development outflows too much without risking falling behind other players in the industry. And it is important to note that quantum computing is shaping up to be a competitive arena, with tech giants like Alphabet and Nvidia also aiming to establish themselves in the picks-and-shovels niche. These larger, well-capitalized companies will be able to spend more on research and leverage larger supply chains.

Is Quantum Computing a millionaire-maker stock?

QCi is clearly under a lot of pressure because of its minuscule revenue, heavy losses, and the pressure to keep up its research spending. By going public, management now has the ability to raise more money by creating and selling more units of its own stock. While this strategy keeps the business afloat, it can hurt existing shareholders by diluting their ownership stake in the company and their claim on its future profits.

In August, QCi announced a $500 million share offering, which increased its share count by a jaw-dropping 26.9 million. And the company already has 159,883,187 shares outstanding as of the second quarter. Expect this number to continue expanding over time.

While QCi could potentially be a millionaire-maker stock in the right conditions, the risks far outweigh the rewards right now. And fundamentals-focused investors should look for better opportunities.

It’s often said that picks and shovels made more fortunes in gold rushes than most prospectors. In crypto’s version of the story, the picks are electricity, mining chips, and hardware uptime. And that’s where Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA -0.40%) aims to win by operating as an industrial-scale and increasingly efficient miner of Bitcoin.

After Bitcoin’s most recent halving, only miners with cheap, reliable energy and top-tier efficiency can thrive. Marathon’s strategy is built around both. Let’s map out if an investment might help turn Marathon investors into millionaires.

Image source: Getty Images.

Cost and clean power are the moat

In terms of the company’s production capacity, Marathon’s management targets 75 exahash of computing capability by the end of 2025, up by more than 40% from 2024. Efficiency has been trending the right way; after closing 2024 at roughly 20 joules of energy per terahash of computing power (J/TH), its hardware fleet was improved to about 18.3 J/TH by the second quarter of 2025, marking a meaningful cut.

To accomplish that and future efficiency improvements, the company expects to begin energizing its Texas wind power generation site in the second half of 2025. If it can secure further cheap renewable energy buildouts, its self-powering operations will have a competitive advantage that could drive significant returns over the long run.

Is this a millionaire maker?

Marathon currently has 52,477 BTC, which ties its operating results tightly to price appreciation of the coin over time. If we assume Bitcoin will continue to gain value over time, could buying shares of this business mint millionaires?

The 100x outcome that’s necessary to create millionaires implies a process of massive value creation; Marathon’s market cap is currently $6.5 billion. Marathon could, over the course of years, exhibit such value creation via its energy investments, assuming Bitcoin cooperates and the mining company’s execution is solid.

So it isn’t impossible, but it isn’t a safe base case to do your investment planning around, either. Marathon’s potential rewards come with significant risks.

Nuclear stocks are hot right now as electricity usage continues its artificial intelligence (AI)-fueled rise. Nuclear start-up Oklo (OKLO 0.26%) has been one of the hottest, with shares trading up more than 225% already this year.

Even though Oklo hasn’t built a single small modular reactor (SMR), and even though it’s up against some fierce competition, and even though it’s a risky bet, I’m predicting that Oklo will be a millionaire-maker stock.

Here’s why I’m so confident.

Oklo is all in on AI

Most nuclear companies don’t particularly care who their customers are: Their reactors generate electricity, and they’ll sell it to whoever’s willing to pay for it. Oklo has taken a different approach, specifically tailoring parts of its investment pitch to AI providers.

Image source: Getty Images.

In July, Oklo announced a collaboration agreement with digital infrastructure company Vertiv (VRT -1.34%) to co-develop thermal management solutions for hyperscale data centers co-located with and powered by Oklo’s nuclear power plants. The collaboration makes sense because both data centers and nuclear reactors generate lots of heat and require heavy-duty industrial cooling systems.

This AI focus isn’t particularly surprising given Oklo’s history. It went public in 2024 through a merger with AltC Acquisition, a SPAC helmed by OpenAI founder Sam Altman. Altman himself served as Oklo’s board chair until April, when he stepped down to allow the company to pursue deals with AI companies other than OpenAI.

Oklo apparently has friends in high places

Besides Altman, Oklo has its fair share of big investors. Cathie Wood‘s Ark Invest owns a stake, for example. But the company has some even more powerful players in its corner.

Oklo seems to have found a friend in the Trump administration, which has promoted nuclear power even as it has canceled funding for solar and wind projects. But even beyond its general support for nuclear energy, the Trump administration seems to hold Oklo in particularly high regard.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently selected 11 projects for its Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program. Two of these are Oklo projects, and a third is a project of Oklo’s subsidiary Atomic Alchemy. No other company had more than one of its projects selected. The program’s stated goal is to have three reactors operational by July 4, 2026, and it seems ready to provide extra help to make that happen.

A little success

In spite of all these elements — powerful backers, government support, AI buzz — there’s still the very real possibility that Oklo might never get off the ground. SMRs are still a relatively unproven technology, with only a handful operational anywhere in the world (and none in the U.S.). Unforeseen technical issues or design flaws could delay Oklo’s projects enough that competitors bring viable products to market first, shutting Oklo out. Oklo’s design might fail to deliver the promised output or end up costing too much to be viable. In short, a lot could go wrong here for investors.

That said, Oklo could become a millionaire-maker stock well before it ever fully deploys its technology at scale. If Oklo can bring one of its SMR prototypes online by 2027 as planned, and that prototype performs well enough to convince some big AI companies to place orders for Oklo-powered data centers, the company’s share price is likely to skyrocket in anticipation of future business, rewarding investors who buy in now.

Even though it’s a speculative investment that might not pan out, I think Oklo’s potential makes it worth a look for risk-tolerant investors.