The US government is stepping up its moves to expand the use of artificial intelligence in the country. In the latest news, President Donald Trump joined executives from some of the largest technology and energy companies for a summit in Pittsburgh to discuss the moves.
Several tech executives and officials from top tech and energy firms attended the Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University, including those from Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Exxon Mobil. The leaders discussed how to position the US as a leader in artificial intelligence, which is currently in an intense AI arms race with rival China.
Trump, along with the summit’s host, U.S. Senator Dave McCormick, a Republican ally from Pennsylvania, underlined an estimated $90 billion in artificial intelligence and energy investments in the state.
“This is a really triumphant day for the people of the Commonwealth and for the United States of America, we’re doing things that nobody ever thought possible.”
-Donald Trump
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 Q1 2025.
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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
10. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 57
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Investors Are Watching Closely. On July 16, Stifel analyst David Grossman reaffirmed a “Buy” rating for the stock and increased the price target from $290.00 to $310.00. Stifel’s rating reflects continued optimism for IBM’s projected financial performance and potential growth ahead of its second-quarter earnings report due on July 23.
The firm believes that IBM is a “stable/defensive compounder” with mid-single-digit revenue growth potential and annual margin expansion. This should yield mid-to-high-single-digit earnings along with free cash flow growth.
Some factors highlighted by the firm which may act as revenue tailwinds for the stock are its z17 mainframe cycle released in mid-June and IBM’s capability to leverage recent software acquisitions like Hashi and DataStax.
Nevertheless, Grossman noted that even though fundamentals for the stock are stable/positive, it may be difficult to forecast upward earnings revision in the current environment. This can be risky heading into the earnings report, which is why a post-Q2 earnings report may be a better entry point.
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is a multinational technology company and a pioneer in artificial intelligence, offering AI consulting services and a suite of AI software products.
9. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 64
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is one of the 10 AI Stocks Investors Are Watching Closely. On July 16, Crowdstrike announced an expanded collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to fast-track AI adoption in cybersecurity and secure AI use. Under the collaboration, Crowdstrike’s new tools, the falcon-mcp, which is an MCP server for the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform, and CrowdStrike AI Red Team Services, are available under the new AI Agents and Tools category of AWS Marketplace.
These tools will help AWS customers to operationalize agentic AI workflow integrations, as well as safely test and protect AI systems within their existing AWS environment. With AI adoptions accelerating, offering realistic ways to connect models to real-time security operations has become a critical need. Trusted frameworks such as those from Crowdstrike can help companies power their security operations and protect the AI systems those operations depend on.
“Agentic AI is fundamentally changing business of all sizes across every industry – but only secure AI can safely scale to deliver long-term results. With these offerings now available in AWS Marketplace, CrowdStrike is giving customers the power to safely build, test, and run AI-driven security workflows using the same cybersecurity platform trusted to protect the world’s most critical environments.”
-Daniel Bernard, chief business officer, CrowdStrike.
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is a leader in AI-driven endpoint and cloud workload protection.
