2 Stocks With Monster Potential to Hold Through the Next Decade

The market is starting to price a second-order AI bottleneck: not just compute, but the physical inputs and power behind compute. That creates a reflexive setup where any credible path to more copper, nickel, cobalt, or behind-the-meter generation gets bid as an “AI infrastructure” proxy, even if the core business remains pre-commercial. The winners in the near term are likely the financing chain and option market, not the operating businesses themselves, because the equity value is being driven by narrative optionality ahead of cash flow.

For TMC, the real catalyst is regulatory de-risking, but the more important issue is whether the project economics can survive a world where deep-sea mining faces sustained ESG litigation, permitting drag, and a likely multi-year capex ramp. If approvals advance, the upside can be abrupt because supply is highly levered to a single jurisdictional decision; if approvals stall, the downside is slow bleed through dilution and capital scarcity. The market is underweight how far out the first meaningful volumes likely are, which makes the stock more of a 12-24 month binary than a durable compounder.

NNE has a different risk profile: it benefits from the scarcity value of firm power for data centers, but the path to commercialization is longer and more regulation-intensive than the market is likely discounting. The key second-order effect is that hyperscalers may prefer quicker solutions first—gas turbines, PPAs, grid interconnects, and modular battery storage—before adopting novel nuclear, which pushes out revenue recognition and increases financing risk. In that sense, the “AI power” trade is real, but the cleaner expressions may still be incumbent utilities, gas infrastructure, and select uranium exposure rather than the most speculative reactor developers.