We recently compiled a list of the 20 Trending AI Stocks on Latest Analyst Ratings and News. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) stands against the other trending AI stocks.
Global management consulting firm Bain & Company recently released a report on the artificial intelligence industry, highlighting that AI was driving an unprecedented wave of technological change, with the market for AI products and services projected to reach between $780 billion and $990 billion by 2027. Per the research done by Bain, major cloud services providers were at the forefront of AI research and development, pushing the boundaries of larger models, advanced infrastructure, and energy efficiency. These hyperscalers were focusing on the development of larger, more complex models that demanded significant computational power and resources, leading to the need for data centers with energy capacities up to gigawatts, potentially straining energy grids and supply chains.
Read more about these developments by accessing 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock and AI News You Should Not Have Missed.
Bain underlined that while the big players dominated the high end of the market with expansive models and enormous data centers, innovation was also thriving in smaller models. These smaller, domain-specific models were being deployed at the edge, where they were more cost-effective, energy-efficient, and capable of addressing real-time processing needs, particularly in applications like autonomous driving. The proliferation of models like Llama, Claude, and Gemini illustrated how AI was evolving rapidly beyond just a few proprietary models, with many options now open-source or specialized for particular tasks.
The research further detailed that the rapid growth in AI workloads, particularly with data-heavy applications, was also reshaping the technology landscape. The need for increased storage, computing power, and memory was driving innovations in data center design, networking, and storage technologies. Per Bain, chip companies and particularly GPU makers were expanding beyond their core graphics processing units to include integrated solutions that improved the efficiency of AI models, with their products now combining compute, memory, and networking capabilities. The competition was also spurring the development of vertically integrated AI solutions, where tech companies designed everything from hardware to software to optimize AI performance.
Read more about these developments by accessing 33 Most Important AI Companies You Should Pay Attention To and 20 Industrial Stocks Already Riding the AI Wave.
Our Methodology
For this article, we selected AI stocks based on the latest news and analyst ratings. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
A technician in a clean room assembling a semiconductor chip using a microscope.
Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 77
Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) provides equipment, services, and software for the semiconductor industry. The company, one of the most prominent in the chip space, has historically performed better than peers in terms of financials. Over the past decade, the revenue of the company has increased by nearly 350%. Consensus revenue estimates suggest continued growth for this metric, with revenue projected to increase from around $27 billion in fiscal 2024 to over $37 billion in fiscal 2028. There is plenty of potential for further acceleration due to the AI revolution.
Gary Dickerson, the chief of Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT), spoke at the Goldman Sachs 2024 Communacopia and Technology Conference earlier this month, noting that the whole industry was focused on energy efficient computing as the biggest global inflections ever were driving the semiconductor growth, like AI, IoT, Industrial Automation, Robotics, EVs, Autonomous Vehicles, and Renewable Energy. Per Dickerson, these were all just really big multi-trillion dollar inflections.
Overall AMAT ranks 14th on our list of the trending AI stocks. While we acknowledge the potential of AMAT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AMAT but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.