According to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the artificial intelligence boom isn’t the same as the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s.
“This is different in the sense that these companies, the companies that are so highly valued, actually have earnings and stuff like that.”
He noted how unlike past tech booms, the current AI spending is driven by real companies and real profits.
“I won’t go into particular names,” he noted, “but they actually have earnings.
“These companies … actually have business models and profits and that kind of thing. So it’s really a different thing.”
Powell’s comments highlight how billions of dollars of investment in artificial intelligence has become a real driver of economic growth.
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. Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE:BE)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 44
Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE:BE) is one of the 10 AI Stocks in the Spotlight This Week. On October 30, BTIG raised the firm’s price target on the stock to $145 from $80 and kept a “Buy” rating on the shares. The price target raise follows BE’s third quarter 2025 financial results.
BE stock was up 19% following the earnings print where it reported a revenue for $519M, beating consensus estimates by 21%. Its fuel cell technology has become more attractive toward investors driven by the rising demand from AI data centres.
BTIG noted how BE received a Wyoming data center project in Q3 for ~900MW of fuel cells, with construction starting as early as 2026. It has also entered in a Brookfield partnership in October for “up to $5B of fuel cell capacity to support data center buildout.”
The firm is constructive on the stock in the “wake of recent agreements,” growing pipeline visibility, and expectations that “Fremont’s spare manufacturing capacity will support higher utilization.”
“We are more constructive on BE’s ability to secure a larger than expected share of manufacturing capacity in the wake of recent agreements (consensus points to <50% utilization in 2027). And with a growing number of projects looking to break ground while competing gas-fired generation faces multiyear delays, we look for BE to begin converting this capacity into firm backlog in the near-term. Bottom line: BE continues to sign agreements powering hyperscale data center projects. We increase our PT on growing pipeline visibility and expectations that Fremont’s spare manufacturing capacity will support higher utilization.”
Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE:BE) develops solid-oxide fuel cell systems for on-site power generation, helping meet the growing energy demands of AI data centers.
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 in the Spotlight This Week. On October 29, Bernstein SocGen Group reiterated its Market Perform rating on the stock with a $935.00 price target.
The firm remains neutral on the stock following reports of a Silicon Valley startup that claims to have developed a cheaper semiconductor manufacturing method.
According to analyst David Dai, X-ray lithography is not a new concept, and that EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) technology has emerged from its development efforts.
“Can a start-up challenge ASML and TSMC with radical lithography tool? According to news reports, a Silicon Valley start-up claims to have developed a radically cheaper semiconductor manufacturing method by using a proprietary particle accelerator and compact lithography machine, and it has demonstrated 12nm features with a custom X-ray light source. We provide our views below. X-ray lithography? While this might be a new idea to many investors today, people who have been in the field long enough would remember that’s the concept dated before EUV—in fact, X-ray lithography was first proposed in 1972, but finally was given up in around 2000, and EUV (originally called “Soft X-ray”) was born in its ashes.”
Bernstein highlighted several challenges with the X-ray technology and also expressed scepticism regarding the start up’s claims. As such, it views limited disruption risk from the claims and views ASML’s dominance as intact.
“In theory X-ray (with wavelength of 1-10nm) has shorter wavelength than EUV (13.5nm), and would have offered better lithography resolution, but too many problems around it proved insurmountable. No optics could be used for X-ray to bend it to focus, hence X-ray lithography has to be proximity lithography, meaning the mask needs to be very close (sub-microns) to the wafer, which causes huge alignment and diffraction issues. The mask needs to be tiny, any bigger mask would lead to lack of uniformity, hence restricting the size of chip patterned area. The mask needs to be made with exactly the same feature size as the printed pattern; in contrast, EUV lithography with 4x reduction ratio, meaning the features on masks can be 4x bigger than the actual pattern to be written. While the start-up claims to have solved the light source issue (which is a big question mark in itself), it’s unlikely to solve these intrinsic issues with X-ray lithography. Even if they can bring down the cost of particle accelerator (which costs billions or at least hundreds of millions), there is… a lack of ecosystem support.”
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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