Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks are hot. Maybe a little bit too hot. With lofty valuations and uncertain market potential, many AI stocks may not be good choices for "buy-and-hold" investing. Others, though, look like better long-term bets.

While there's some inherent level of risk in any new technology, if I were investing $3,000 in AI stocks, I'd pick a mix of established players and higher-risk ventures. Here are my three top AI stocks for long-term investment.

With a market capitalization of more than $3 trillion, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) stock is certainly more expensive today than it was two years ago. That's at least partly due to excitement about its AI offerings.

Microsoft's premier AI investment is its financial stake in ChatGPT's developer OpenAI -- which has grown to a whopping $13 billion over several years, almost half the AI start-up's current estimated value! However, Microsoft has also made a number of AI-focused improvements to its own products. These include dozens of AI-driven apps and tools for its Azure cloud platform, and the AI Copilot tool for its Office suite. Plus, with so many revenue streams besides AI -- including software, cloud services, and gaming -- Microsoft isn't dependent on its AI investments for financial success.

In spite of the market's AI enthusiasm, Microsoft's current valuation of 34 times earnings is well within its historical range, and its shares have actually lagged the performance of the S&P 500 in 2024. This looks like a good time to pick up shares.

The comeback kid

Although you might think of it more as a cybersecurity company than an AI play, CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) has made big investments in AI that are poised to pay off for the company.

CrowdStrike was founded on the idea of "crowdsourcing" cybersecurity. By looking at threats that were circulating in real time and rapidly deploying responses across its entire network via the cloud, CrowdStrike's model was perfectly suited to adding AI elements to improve threat detection and solution deployment. It has begun to roll out such tools for its primary Falcon system, including Threat Graph, which uses AI and machine learning to analyze data in real time, and AI-powered conversational assistant Charlotte AI, which helps analysts locate vulnerabilities in their system and take action to remove them.

CrowdStrike made headlines in July when a faulty update caused widespread outages across the global internet. The stock lost more than 40% of its value and still hasn't fully recovered. However, the company seems to have successfully navigated the fallout with minimal long-term impact, resulting in a buying opportunity for this AI leader in a fast-growing industry.