Back in January, DeepSeek sparked a frenzy in the tech landscape with its R1 model, and now it has returned to ignite a debate once again. According to the AI startup, it spent $294,000 on training its R1 model, a figure much lower than those reported for U.S. rivals.
The figure is the first estimate that DeepSeek has revealed in a peer-reviewed article in the academic journal Nature. Previously, the company’s AI models, boasting more efficiency and cost effectiveness, had led investors to dump tech stocks amid fears that they will no longer dominate.
However, the company since disappeared from the public eye and appears only when it launches product updates. The Nature article has revealed that DeepSeek’s reasoning-focused R1 model cost $294,000 to train and used 512 Nvidia H800 chips.
The company has acknowledged that it owns A100 chips and had used them in preparatory stages of development.
“Regarding our research on DeepSeek-R1, we utilized the A100 GPUs to prepare for the experiments with a smaller model. After this initial phase, R1 was trained for a total of 80 hours on the 512 chip-cluster of H800 chips.”
For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds. The hedge fund data is as of Q2 2025.
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10. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 66
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Analysts Are Tracking Closely. On September 18, Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss raised the firm’s price target on the stock to $475 from $460 and kept an Equal Weight rating on the shares.
The rating affirmation follows the Fal.Con User Conference and investor briefing held in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Crowdstrike’s Analyst Day focused on the increasing benefits of platformization, particularly now that artificial intelligence is also increasing risks for customers.
Analyst Keith Weiss noted that CrowdStrike projected a net new annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth of greater than 20% in fiscal year 2027. Meanwhile, its target of $20 billion in ARR by fiscal year 2036 represents more than four times its current level. These targets have been “most incrementally positive,” noted the analysts.
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is a leader in AI-driven endpoint and cloud workload protection.
9. ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 78
ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Analysts Are Tracking Closely. On September 18, BofA Securities analyst Didier Scemama raised the price target on the stock to EUR941.00 (from EUR724.00) and kept a Buy rating on the shares.
The rating follows Nvidia’s announcement of a broad partnership with Intel, including a $5 billion investment in the struggling US chipmaker.
In an investor note, the analysts highlighted how a potentially more competitive Intel in both datacenters and PCs should be positive for Semicaps such as ASML. Semiconductor capital equipment providers like itself offer critical lithography systems used in chip manufacturing.
ASML Holding N.V. (NASDAQ:ASML) develops and sells advanced semiconductor equipment, including lithography, metrology, and inspection systems for chip manufacturing.
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