The Strangest AI Stock of 2026 Doesn't Make Chips. It Owns Land in Texas.

Texas Pacific Land (NYSE: TPL) doesn't make a single chip, write a line of code, or run a data center. It owns dirt -- about 880,000 acres of it, mostly spread across the Permian Basin of West Texas. And yet it has been one of the market's best-performing stocks of 2026, with shares up about 38% year to date, even after pulling back from a gain of about 91% at their late-February peak. That leaves the S&P 500's roughly 7% rise far behind.

So how does a land-and-royalty company become one of the year's hottest plays on artificial intelligence (AI)? And can the run last?

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Texas Pacific Land traces its roots to an 1880s railroad bankruptcy that left it holding millions of acres of Texas land. Today, it is one of the largest landowners in the state, and it makes money in two main ways. Its land and resource management business collects oil and gas royalties from the energy companies that drill on its acreage, plus f

Fuente original: Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/strangest-ai-stock-2026-doesnt-233100176.html)