We’re nearly halfway through 2025, and what a ride it’s been for the stock market. As of this writing, the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, and Dow Jones Industrial Index are up 2%, up 1%, and down 1%, respectively, year to date.

So, as attention turns to the second half of 2025, three Fool.com contributing analysts have selected their top buys within the technology sector: Reddit (RDDT -1.13%), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 1.12%), and Meta Platforms (META -1.88%). Here’s why.

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Long-term growth investors may want to capitalize on Reddit’s recent volatility

Jake Lerch (Reddit): 2025 has been an up-and-down year for Reddit stock. As of this writing, it’s down 13% year to date. However, the stock has been extremely volatile throughout the year. It’s been up as much as 37% and down by almost 46%.

So, obviously, Reddit isn’t a stock for every investor or investment portfolio. That said, growth-oriented investors willing to hold for years might want to take the stock’s recent volatility as an opportunity to accumulate shares. 

Reddit is a social media stock. It boasts more than 108 million daily average users and is growing fast. As of its most recent quarterly report (for the three months ended on March 31), the company’s revenue growth stood at 61%.

The company makes money through selling ad space, like its much larger social media rival, Meta Platforms. While Meta’s ad ecosystem has existed for more than a decade and now draws in about a half-billion dollars per day, Reddit’s ad ecosystem remains in its infancy.

This creates a possibility for investors. Meta has already proven that the social media advertising model works — and works very well. Meta has ridden that model to a staggering market capitalization of $1.7 trillion. Reddit, on the other hand, has a market cap of only $26 billion.

In a move that mirrors Meta, Reddit recently announced plans to integrate artificial intelligence (AI)-powered ad tools into its network. This strategy could help marketers increase return on investment (ROI) by improving ad targeting and content.

With its large, increasing user base and blistering revenue growth, there’s every reason to think Reddit’s long-term prospects remain bright — and its stock price will rise.

Product releases could draw buyers to this rising AI chip stock

Will Healy (Advanced Micro Devices): On the surface, Advanced Micro Devices might look more like a second-quarter than a second-half stock. Since reaching an intra-day low of $76.48 per share on April 8, the stock has risen by approximately 65% over the last six weeks.

However, that increase could be just the beginning of what is gearing up to be a second-half comeback. On June 12, AMD released its development pipeline for its AI accelerators through 2027. Investor interest coalesced around its MI400 GPU, which it plans to release sometime in 2026.

The MI400 should significantly improve upon the recently released MI350, offering double the compute power, 50% more memory capacity, and 2.5 times the bandwidth. Such advancements are on track to close most of its competitive gap with Nvidia, though Nvidia will almost certainly counter with its own improvements.

Additionally, AMD will integrate the MI400 with its Helios rack system. This rack system will combine the MI400 with AMD’s upcoming Venice CPU and Pensando Vulcano NICs, providing AMD with a unified AI rack-scale infrastructure for modeling and inference.

This is occurring as AMD has begun to benefit from accelerating revenue growth. In the first quarter of 2025, its data center and client (PC) segments grew revenue by 57% and 68%, respectively, while revenue for the gaming and embedded segments declined at a slower rate. Thus, the overall annual revenue growth of 36% in Q1 is significantly faster than the 14% yearly increase in 2024.

Moreover, while AMD trades at a higher P/E ratio than Nvidia, improving profitability places its forward P/E ratio at 32, slightly below that of its larger rival. Furthermore, AMD’s 7.5 price-to-sales (P/S) ratio is far below Nvidia’s sales multiple of 24, likely making the stock more attractive to value-oriented investors.

Admittedly, AMD continues to play catch-up in the AI accelerator market. Nonetheless, with the chip company closing the gap, that low P/S ratio could easily persuade investors to bid AMD stock higher as they anticipate the MI400’s release.

Meta’s advertising model just received another boost.

Justin Pope (Meta Platforms): Oftentimes, winners keep winning. Shares of social media giant Meta Platforms have primarily moved in an upward direction since 2023, but I like the stock’s chances to continue its run over the second half of this year.

Most investors already know that Meta Platforms is a beast in digital advertising. It makes virtually all of its revenue and profits from advertising to the 3.43 billion people who use its family of apps each day.

What investors may not realize is that for years, Facebook and Instagram have carried the company’s advertising water. Meta generated approximately $160.6 billion of its $164.5 billion in total revenue last year from ads placed in Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and third-party mobile apps. Missing from that list is WhatsApp, the wildly popular communications app with over 3 billion monthly active users.

But that’s changing. Meta recently announced that it will finally place ads in WhatsApp statuses and channel pages. That will open up an entirely new revenue stream for the company, which, given the massive ad revenue Facebook and Instagram produce, could drive significant growth as monetization ramps up over time.

Analysts anticipate that Meta’s earnings will grow at an average annual rate of 18% over the next three to five years. I wouldn’t be surprised if WhatsApp’s incremental ad revenue helps the company meet or exceed those estimates. Meta’s price-to-earnings ratio has risen to 27, but, frankly, that’s still reasonable for the growth you’re likely to see over the coming years.

Meta waited over a decade after acquiring WhatsApp to make this move, demonstrating just how well its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, can play the long game. Investors would probably be wise to consider partnering with Meta as buy-and-hold investors at these prices.