In this article, we will take a detailed look at the 10 Buzzing Stocks Everyone is Talking About.
AI stocks are trending as major technology companies continue to invest a fortune in hiring top talent for their future AI plans, with data indicating strong demand for AI products.
Lauren Goode, Wired senior writer, said in a recent program on CNBC that AI remains underhyped in the long term. She was discussing the race among major technology companies to poach top tech talent.
“So, the thing I that researchers and technologists and executives have been saying, at least I’ve heard some of them say around the valley lately, is that what’s going on with generative AI right now, is that it is overhyped in the short term and underhyped in the long term. And so, this is all just still shaking out. It’s still very early days for generative AI. And I think in a sense people are making bets on their teams who they want to be with you know for whatever this sort of super intelligent future future looks like. People have been making some of the comparisons to sports teams saying that these sound a little bit more like locking up people in contracts or packages rather than just like your standard AI or engineering job. But it’s hard to say who ultimately is going to shake out as the quote unquote winner. I think it’s more realistic that there would probably be a lot of winners in this space.”
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10. Textron Inc (NYSE:TXT)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 29
Mario Gabelli of GAMCO said in a recent program on CNBC that he likes industrial conglomerate Textron shares.
“Textron Inc (NYSE:TXT) is important because there’s 180 million shares. Scott Donnelly, who runs it, has done a terrific job. And basically, they’re going to earn a little over $6 this year on a non-GAAP basis, a little less than that on a GAAP basis. And the stock has Bell Helicopter. They got replacements for the Blackhawk, but they also have Cessna. And there’s a backlog for the Longitude and the Latitude. And both of those will give them a tailwind, so to speak. And at $85 with that kind of earnings, that is an extraordinarily cheap stock.”
9. National Fuel Gas Co (NYSE:NFG)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 35
Mario Gabelli of GAMCO recently explained why he’s bullish on Natrual Fuel Gas during a program on CNBC.
“They have an asset. That asset is fundamental to the United States. They own significant acreage for the last 100 plus years, 100 years, in Pennsylvania, in an area about a 10,000. They own down to the mineral rights to the center of the earth. Secondly you’re going to try to help people in Connecticut and Massachusetts by bringing in NAT gas there and then you’re going also export some as LNG. So the stock is trading at 90 million shares at 85. They’re going to earn close to $7 this year. And so when you take the assets now, one thing that David Bauer, who’s running it, is doing, he’s going to try to buy other what they call LDC’s, local distribution companies. So they have some in Buffalo, they have some in Pennsylvania. I would say if somebody came to him, he’s probably signed some NDAs right now to buy some utility companies in the gas utility area in the Pennsylvania ideally area. So there’s a lot going on.”
8. Crowdstrike Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 64
Wedbush’s Dan Ives was recently asked about the underperformance of cybersecurity stocks this year. Ives said he believes the market is “wrong” on cybersecurity stocks and pointed to a few strong names he’s bullish on, including Crowdstrike Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRWD).
“I think it’s really been a rotation. Maybe some of the higher growth in software, some of these other AI places. Cyber has maybe lagged here. I think the market’s gotten it wrong. I think actually when you look at a subsector, cybersecurity could be the biggest subsector of the year for tech. Because what we’re seeing when you look at CrowdStrike, you look at Zscaler, Palo Alto, Check Point—as more moves to the cloud, cybersecurity is going to go hand in hand. So I think this is going to be one of those areas that actually significantly outperforms during earnings season.”
Crowdstrike Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRWD) shares are up 36% so far this year.
Artisan Developing World Fund stated the following regarding CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:
“Top contributors to performance for the quarter included MercadoLibre, cybersecurity software leader CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD), NuHoldings (Nubank), Sea, and ARM Holdings. CrowdStrike continued to benefit from an industry backdrop featuring increasing network complexity and heightened security threats, while seeing strong uptake of new customer packages post-service outages last year.”
7. Palantir Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:PLTR)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 77
Wedbush’s Dan Ives recently said during a program on CNBC that Palantir Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:PLTR) will be a key beneficiary of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill.
I think front and center is massive. I— Palantir Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:PLTR)—I think Palantir is going to be a huge beneficiary.
Jackson Peak Capital stated the following regarding Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) was a contributor as a long event-driven trade. We held PLTR into and through its Q4 earnings. The thesis was that it would continue its beat and raise cadence and have investors chasing the right tail as management lays out what’s possible under the new administration in DC, announcing new contract wins. It also benefitted from market structure dynamics with institutions underweight and PLTR joining the Nasdaq 100 index in December.”
6. Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 90
Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist and portfolio manager at Hightower, explained in a recent program on CNBC why she recently bought Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT). Link praised
“I love the theme. I’ve been pounding the table for two and a half years on this theme. Verdive is the very best in the business and I and I just got it got away from me. It was always too expensive and so this stock is down 25% from its highs. Yesterday it was down 12% on the rumors that AWS was building a cooling system. I’m like you’ve got to be kidding me. These guys Vertiv have an end-to-end solution and services and a huge install base. And so down 12% I averaged down and I’m going to continue on any weakness because I still believe very strongly in this decade long theme.”
Carillon Scout Mid Cap Fund stated the following regarding Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“Vertiv Holdings Co (NYSE:VRT) provides data center infrastructure equipment and services. The stock suffered amid concerns over a near-term slowdown in orders for its cooling systems, which we believe was primarily due to hyperscalers that are redesigning their data centers to cram more equipment into each server rack. Broader concerns regarding artificial intelligence demand and fears of peak levels of capital spending have also weighed on investor sentiment. We believe a significant number of new data centers must be built to meet the demand for increasing AI training and inference workloads globally. These power-hungry systems generate more heat and require greater power density, which can be addressed by the more efficient power and cooling solutions that Vertiv provides.”
5. Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 97
HSBC’s Frank Lee explained in a recent program on CNBC why he raised his price target on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD) to $200. Lee believes AMD could take in $8 billion in AI revenues and talked about other growth catalysts for the stock that’s up 29% so far this year.
“I think the main thing is that, you know, compared to where we were at the beginning of the year where we got a lot more conservative, in terms of the outlook of Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD) AI revenue. We see some changes in the last couple months that definitely much more constructive, and I think at the beginning of the year, there was very little visibility. The MI325 chip that they launched in the, in in the first quarter wasn’t getting quite the feedback we were expecting. But now as we see the MI355, the feedback’s been a lot more positive, and also we see a big uplift in pricing—much more than we previously expected—and we do see the hyperscalers seem to be interested. So hence we think there could be a big reversal in terms of the AI revenue for for this year. So we now have more than eight billion in revenues, which is considerably higher than the consensus around six.”
Longriver Partners Fund stated the following regarding Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:
“Nvidia’s NVLink, its high-bandwidth interconnect, underpins training at scale, where GPUs must coordinate across racks. NVLink Fusion, announced this year, may extend that advantage by letting custom chips plug into Nvidia’s system rather than replace it. However, many inference tasks can be handled independently, one GPU at a time. That lowers the importance of networking, and with it, Nvidia’s edge in tightly integrated systems.
This has given Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) a window to become more than a second source. Its MI300X is now deployed at Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, and Dell. In some inference workloads, it beats Nvidia’s H100. As one expert put it, “ROCm used to be a science project. Now we’re finally seeing it run real workloads.” AMD plans to ship full-rack MI400 systems next year. It still trails in training, but inference gives it a real wedge into the market.
AMD is also leaning into openness. ROCm is open source, its interconnects run over Ethernet, not proprietary links, and it is sticking with x86 CPUs. That may appeal to buyers wary of lock-in or reluctant to cross-compile for ARM.”
4. Oracle Corp (NYSE:ORCL)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 97
Jim Lebenthal, partner at Cerity Partners, explained in a recent program on CNBC why he’s trimming his position in Oracle Corp (NYSE:ORCL).
“I’ve been in the stock 2 and a half years. I’m up 150%. It’s become a very big position. I’m trimming the stock. I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight trimming the stock. I’m still going to own shares. However, we’re entering earnings season. We all know that in earnings season something gets stupidly dislocated. I have been fully invested. I need to have some dry powder. If I want to buy low, I have to sell high. That’s the name of the game.”
Lebenthal, however, insisted that he’s not “hating on” Oracle Corp (NYSE:ORCL). He said he first bought the stock when it was around $86.
Mar Vista U.S. Quality Strategy stated the following regarding Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:
“Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) shares rebounded from the pressure experienced in calendar Q1 2025, as concerns about tariffs impacting IT budgets proved to be overstated. The company reported a strong fiscal Q4 2025 (May quarter), driven by robust demand for its hyperscale cloud offering, OCI Gen 2, which supports large language models.
Oracle issued a confident outlook, projecting accelerating revenue and operating income growth over the intermediate term as it continues its strategic transition to cloud-based solutions. The OCI Gen 2 platform is particularly well-suited for generative AI workloads, where Oracle is gaining both mindshare and market share within the hyperscaler cloud market. Notably, in the most recent quarter, Oracle reported strong bookings, highlighted by a 41% year-over-year increase in remaining performance obligations, reaching nearly $138 billion.
Further reinforcing its momentum, Oracle filed an 8-K disclosing several large OCI Gen 2 contracts signed in the current quarter (August quarter), including a new agreement with a single customer expected to generate more than $30 billion in annual revenue beginning in FY2028.
In parallel, Oracle has spent more than a decade modernizing its back-office ERP, supply chain management, and HR application suites for the cloud. These long-term investments are now translating into market share gains across strategic back-office applications, a segment that continues to exhibit healthy growth.”
3. Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 159
Walter Piecyk from LightShed Partners recently talked about his note discussing his thoughts on Apple needing a new CEO. The analyst believes Cook can be replaced by a “product-focused” CEO and plans for leadership replacement could bode well for the stock. He believes Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) “fooled” investors about its AI plans.
“I mean, they effectively fooled investors last year at WWDC, making them believe that there was a path to AI when none existed. We all know the state of Siri today. I know it’s been bantered about—Perplexity perhaps being an option to acquire. That’s not a, you know, an LLM in the sense of ChatGPT, right? This is a wrapper for existing LLMs. But frankly, it’s a better situation than they’re in today. And you can’t just snap your fingers. This is like the concept of moving production from China to India—you just don’t snap your fingers and all of a sudden, you know, change your production overnight. Same thing with AI. Look at the capex that Facebook and Google and others have invested in AI, and then look at the capex that Apple has invested in, which has been non-existent. So you just don’t overnight create an AI strategy that’s homegrown. And then, alternatively, Perplexity is, you know, a possible solution that maybe, you know, pushes them forward and gives them a—a—a starting point that at least they can build off of,” he said during an interview with CNBC.
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) is desperately in need of new catalysts. The company’s revenue in China fell 8% in fiscal year 2024, following a 2% decline the previous year. The Chinese market accounts for about 15% of Apple’s total revenue, so this downtrend cannot be ignored.
Investors had hopes from the Wearables, Home, and Accessories segment, but so far its performance has been weak. Vision Pro faces tough competition from Meta’s $500 Quest and the more affordable Quest 3S, making it hard to justify its $3,500 price tag. The failure of Apple’s HomePod, unable to compete with Amazon’s and Google’s lower-priced offerings, further highlights the challenges in this market.
Apple’s iPhone 16 has not shown promising growth prospects yet and investors are still in a wait-and-see mode on the AI platform.
Mar Vista U.S. Quality Premier Strategy stated the following regarding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:
“Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares came under pressure in the first half of calendar 2025 amid concerns over softening iPhone demand, rising competition from Huawei in China, challenges related to the rollout of Apple Intelligence, its new on-device AI offering, and potential tariff-related headwinds. Despite these near-term pressures, we continue to view Apple as a competitively advantaged business, anchored by the strength of its ecosystem. With over 2 billion active devices and more than 1 billion paying subscribers, Apple benefits from a loyal customer base and a growing stream of high-margin, recurring services revenue. This stable cash flow enables continued investment in innovation, even during periods of cyclical softness. We believe the current headwinds are transitory, and Apple remains well-positioned to lead in the emerging category of AI-enabled edge devices.”
2. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 212
Dan Niles, Niles Investment Management founder and portfolio manager, said in a recent program on CNBC that he turned bullish on NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) for two reasons. The first was the company’s China write-down after the US government imposed new restrictions on AI chip sales. The second was related to the core dynamics of the AI industry fueling demand:
“So training spending is slowing down, but you finally had inference spending picking up. And so that means people are going to ChatGPT, OpenAI, Gemini, which is the one I use a lot. I probably use it 10 to 20 times a day. And you had inference demand really start to take off. Google talked about the fact that in the month of May, the tokens that they were generating were up 50 times year-over-year. And then Microsoft, which obviously was invested in OpenAI back in 2019 before any of us had even heard of ChatGPT in 2022, they came out and said, “Hey, we have a 5x increase in the number of tokens we’re generating. And so you put all that together, companies forecast derisks because of that massive write-down, some of the sovereign AI demand as President Trump went to the Middle East and you had all these deals, all of that stuff.”
Mar Vista Global Quality Strategy stated the following regarding NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:
“NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) shares rebounded from their calendar Q1 lows as investor concerns over DeepSeek’s efficiency gains and U.S. government restrictions on advanced AI semiconductors, such as NVIDIA’s H20 family of GPUs, proved overstated. Demand for NVIDIA’s next-generation Blackwell platform remains strong, fueled by the growing complexity of large language models and the emergence of reasoning-based applications. As CEO Jensen Huang noted, reasoning tasks can require up to 10 times the compute power of training a conventional large language model. With the AI market still in the early stages of a multi-year infrastructure build-out, NVIDIA is well-positioned to capture significant value as the industry standard for accelerated computing.”
1. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 284
Brian Schwartz, Oppenheimer analyst, recently talked about Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) during a program on CNBC and explained his bullish case for the company. The analyst has a $600 price target for the stock, which shows a 17% upside potential from July 21 stock price.
“What’s going to get Microsoft stock specifically to our price target is going to be upside potential that we think is going to exist from the earnings and their cash flow. As the spending ramps in the near term, we think that the earnings power could be 15% higher than what investors are currently thinking over the next 12 months from Microsoft. That combined with if they can maintain an accelerated growth within the core business, that too could drive a higher multiple for Microsoft.”
Mar Vista U.S. Quality Premier Strategy stated the following regarding Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:
“Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares rebounded in calendar Q2 following a strong fiscal Q3 2025 (March quarter), driven by accelerating demand for AI-related Azure services. Robust second-half momentum, coupled with strong bookings as reflected in the Remaining Performance Obligation exceeding $300 billion (+33% year over year), helped ease investor concerns around enterprise IT spending and the long-term return potential of Microsoft’s substantial AI infrastructure investments.
We continue to believe Microsoft is well-positioned to gain market share as organizations increasingly embrace a digital-first strategy and adopt generative AI solutions. With deep enterprise penetration and a comprehensive portfolio spanning Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), Microsoft remains the preeminent mission-critical IT provider across industries.
The company is executing effectively against a large and growing market opportunity by enabling digital transformation and delivering cutting-edge AI tools like ChatGPT that enhance productivity and lower costs. As a result, we expect Microsoft’s offerings to remain resilient, even in a challenging macroeconomic environment, supporting low double-digit intrinsic value growth over our investment horizon.”
While we acknowledge the potential of MSFT to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MSFT and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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