Several of the market's hottest artificial intelligence (AI) companies -- including Nvidia, Broadcom, and Super Micro Computer -- all split their stocks or announced their plans to do so over the past year. Those events didn't actually make their high-flying stocks fundamentally cheaper, since they simply split their existing shares into smaller slices, but they still attracted a lot of attention from retail investors who wanted to buy entire lots (100 shares) of a stock instead of just a few. They also made it easier to trade options, since a single contract is tethered to a single lot, and for the companies to pay their employees with more flexible stock-based compensation plans.

So for long-term investors, stock splits don't matter too much because they don't change the company's business model or valuations. But forward stock splits are still usually a sign of a well-run company -- since its stock price has risen so much that it needs to be pruned. ASML (NASDAQ: ASML) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) are two AI-driven companies that fit that description and might be ripe for a split.

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