I've been looking at some of the best dividend stocks of all time, and honestly, the ones that compound over decades beat out chasing high yields every time. Found two tech stocks worth holding long-term that really stand out.

Broadcom caught my attention first. The AI boom is insane right now, and this company is positioned perfectly as a major supplier of AI training hardware for data centers. Currently yielding 0.77% with a $2.60 annual dividend per share, but here's the thing - their dividend has been growing at 12% annually over the past five years. If that keeps up, you're looking at 2.39% yield on your original cost in 10 years, and 7.43% in 20 years. That's compounding in action.

What makes this sustainable? Broadcom has a $73 billion backlog in AI-related products. They're making high-performance networking switches, custom AI accelerators, and infrastructure software. The numbers are solid too - $23 billion in net income on $64 billion revenue over the last 12 months. They're only paying out about half their earnings as dividends, so there's plenty of cushion even if demand dips during a downturn.

Then there's Microsoft. This is one of those best dividend stocks for the long haul because the business model is just bulletproof. They've been increasing their dividend by 10% annually for the past five years, and the current yield sits at 0.90%. Started paying dividends back in 2004, so this is a company with serious dividend discipline.

Yes, there's been chatter about AI agents disrupting software companies. Real concern, but Microsoft's already moving. They launched Agent 365 to help businesses handle security and governance with AI. The bigger advantage though? Trust. When you've got 450 million commercial seats in Microsoft 365, organizations don't just switch. They reported 17% year-over-year revenue growth last quarter from their core productivity and enterprise cloud services.

The yield looks modest now at 0.90%, but they're only paying out 22% of trailing earnings. That leaves massive room for dividend growth as their AI software business scales.

Both of these are among the best dividend stocks to consider if you're building passive income while staying exposed to AI growth. The compounding effect over 10-20 years is where the real money gets made.