3. NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP)
NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) took the No. 3 position after its shares soared 22.39 percent to close at $174.29, powered by strong fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 earnings and growing investor excitement around the company’s role in artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud infrastructure, enterprise data storage, and intelligent data management. During intraday trading, NetApp climbed as high as $192.83, setting a fresh all-time high before paring gains into the close. Even with that pullback, the stock’s move was still one of the biggest and most important rallies of the day, especially among established technology companies with meaningful exposure to AI-driven enterprise spending.
The numbers behind the move were strong enough to get Wall Street’s attention. NetApp reported that net income for the fourth quarter rose 19 percent to $404 million from $340 million in the same period last year, while net revenues increased 12.47 percent to $1.948 billion from $1.732 billion year-on-year. Those figures showed that the company is not only benefiting from the AI narrative, but also delivering measurable financial growth. In a market where investors have become more selective about artificial intelligence stocks, companies need more than a buzzword. They need revenue growth, profitability, cash flow, customer demand, and a clear business model. NetApp delivered enough of that combination to trigger a major rally.
For the full fiscal year, NetApp also posted solid performance, with net income growing 8 percent to $1.276 billion from $1.186 billion, while net revenues inched up 5 percent to $6.925 billion from $6.572 billion year-on-year. The annual growth rate may not look explosive compared with some smaller high-growth technology stocks, but for a mature enterprise technology company, it reflects stability, execution, and improving relevance in a market increasingly driven by AI workloads. More importantly, the company said fiscal year 2026 was a landmark year, with record results across revenue, gross profit, operating income, cash flow from operations, and free cash flow. That kind of record-setting performance is exactly what long-term investors want to see from a company positioned in data infrastructure.
Chief Executive Officer George Kurian highlighted the company’s role in powering customers’ AI-driven transformations through its hybrid cloud and intelligent data infrastructure platform. This is a key part of NetApp’s investment story. Artificial intelligence does not run on hype alone. It needs data, storage, security, high-performance access, cloud connectivity, and infrastructure that can handle complex workloads. NetApp is positioning itself as one of the companies helping enterprises manage data wherever it resides, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or across hybrid environments. That makes the stock relevant to several popular SEO and investor search themes, including AI infrastructure stocks, hybrid cloud stocks, enterprise data storage companies, cloud computing stocks, and best technology stocks to watch.
Kurian also said NetApp achieved its target operating margin while launching next-generation AI solutions and expanding strategic partnerships. That is important because investors do not only want growth at any cost. They want growth with margin discipline, especially after several years when the market punished technology companies for overspending. NetApp’s ability to grow revenue, expand AI-related offerings, maintain operating margin targets, and generate record cash flow gave the market a cleaner reason to buy the stock. The rally to a fresh all-time high showed that investors are beginning to see NetApp as more than a traditional storage provider. They are increasingly viewing it as a serious intelligent data infrastructure company in the AI economy.
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