Jim Cramer: Here's the list of AI winners to buy for 2026 and beyond

CNBC's Jim Cramer said the data center and artificial intelligence boom is becoming all-consuming, spreading far beyond the tech companies and into nearly every corner of the market . "AI is inexorable. It is fierce. And it is making believers fortunes," the " Mad Money " host said Tuesday after all three major indexes closed higher. The market during first-quarter earnings season has been powered by what Cramer called an "explosion of profits" among companies tied to AI and data centers. And the gains are increasingly being seen across a widening group of stocks, he said. To explain the breadth of the trend, Cramer alluded to a framework popularized by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Huang has described the AI economy as a " five-layer cake " — a stack of interconnected industries all benefiting from the same buildout. At the base is power, the foundation of the entire system. Data centers require enormous amounts of electricity, and Cramer said that's driving strength in companies like Vistra , GE Vernova , and Constellation Energy . The next layer is semiconductors. "You need the chips," Cramer said, pointing to Nvidia , along with rivals like AMD and Intel . He also highlighted storage and memory players like Western Digital and Micron Technology , as well as equipment makers including ASML and Applied Materials . Above that sits another hardware layer that makes AI systems possible. …