In this article, we will talk about the 10 hidden AI stocks to buy now.

Collaborative Partnerships in AI

Research and development in artificial intelligence began in academia and dominated the sector until the early 2000s. Later, this pattern switched up and industry took over AI with higher investment, research, and cheaper inputs. Investments in AI by businesses are also almost always followed by commercial applications, making it a more profitable activity than academia.

While these commercial relationships flourish, many companies focus on taking collaborative approaches to partnerships, revolutionizing the AI industry. By partnering with tech giants, such companies are accelerating AI adoption, driving vertical growth through specialized models, and increasing demand for powerful computing resources. This strategic approach is shaping the future of AI.

This was recently discussed in another article, 7 Most Popular AI Penny Stocks Under $5. Here’s an excerpt from it:

“OpenAI’s approach to fostering collaborative partnerships instead of competing directly with tech giants makes it an exceptional model. Macquarie’s Fred Havemeyer (lead software equity research analyst) praised GPT 4 for its “emotional intelligence”. The growing demand for AI chips, exemplified by OpenAI’s use of over 1.7 trillion parameters in its GPT 4 model, will further help NVIDIA and other AI chip manufacturers grow.

On August 20, Bloomberg reported that OpenAI is releasing a feature that will allow businesses to use their company data to customize GPT 4 so that it can be trained on additional information for niche tasks. This is an example of letting companies fine-tune the AI model to act as a customer-service chatbot for their subject areas. According to DeepL CEO, Jarek Kutylowski, specialised AI models are essential for companies to grow vertically.”

Ever since it was founded in 2015, this research company has promoted open research and collaboration within the AI community. By sharing its findings and models, OpenAI encourages other researchers and organizations to build upon its work. This has accelerated advancements in AI and fostered a more inclusive environment.

OpenAI partnered with Microsoft so that the tech giant’s investment ($1 billion in 2019) could facilitate deep integration of OpenAI’s models into its products. Azure offers these models as compliance-ready solutions, crucial for industries requiring high data security.

This was also followed by Brazil’s partnership with the tech giant to use OpenAI to reduce judicial costs. By automating tasks, the Brazilian judiciary is expediting case processing and improving efficiency, saving costs in public sectors.

In a recent discussion on CNBC, Barton Crockett from Rosenblatt Securities and Amit Daryanani from Evercore ISI both agreed that AI is crucial for Apple’s future success. Crockett emphasized that AI offers a unique opportunity to reinvigorate The company’s device ecosystem and that consumers are increasingly valuing AI capabilities in their tech devices, and it seems to be falling behind in this regard. He suggested that partnerships with AI companies like OpenAI could help it bridge this gap and enhance its offerings.

According to reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is reportedly seeking significant new funding, potentially valuing the company at over $100 billion. The investment round, led by Thrive Capital, highlights the intensifying competition among tech giants for a dominant position in the AI industry.

In August 2024, WebProNews reported that OpenAI’s user base doubled to over 200 million in a year and its annual revenue exceeded $2 billion. Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies now use OpenAI products. However, maintaining lead requires addressing practical, safety, and user-friendliness concerns. OpenAI’s plans, including its new search engine, SearchGPT, aim to address these challenges and solidify its position. CEO Sam Altman believes SearchGPT can significantly improve search capabilities.

These instances leave us thinking about whether it’s collaboration or competition that can help AI progress fastest. As the Managing Partner at Boldsquare, Dylan Jones points out, strategic partnerships can significantly impact a company’s valuation. Tech giants’ moves indicate a calculated effort to maintain their AI leadership, even if it means blurring the lines between collaboration and competition.

In a discussion at CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’, CoreWeave co-founder and CEO, Mike Intrator, said that the demand for AI infrastructure is relentless and has been in a state of severe disequilibrium for the past 2.5 years.

He believes that the demand for Nvidia chips is skyrocketing, while the rest of the industry is trying to keep up with it, including CoreWeave. According to Intrator, CoreWeave and its clients anticipate significant growth in AI infrastructure demand. Due to limited industry capacity, clients are struggling to train and serve AI models. CoreWeave, with its ability to provide large-scale AI infrastructure, is well-positioned to meet this growing demand.

However, startups often suffer at the cost of these partnerships, failing to compete with tech giants. Still, many companies are emerging and progressing at a good pace. In this context, we are here with a list of the 10 hidden AI stocks to buy now.

Methodology

To compile our list, we reviewed media reports and watched Wall Street analysts’ interviews to determine under-the-radar and hidden AI stocks. We compiled a list of 20 potential stocks and selected the 10 most popular among elite hedge funds that are expected to be key beneficiaries of the secular trends in artificial intelligence. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of the number of hedge funds that have stakes in them, as of Q2 2024.

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).

10 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Now

10. SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 15

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) is an application software company that uses voice AI in speech recognition and understanding, allowing users to interact with technology using their voice. It is used by many companies across a range of products from smart home devices to automotive systems.

This company was the first to introduce ChatGPT-like capabilities to in-vehicle assistants in Japan and Latin America. By partnering with Perplexity, it has integrated cutting-edge online LLMs into its SoundHound Chat AI which will be released soon.

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) recently announced the acquisition of the AI startup, Amelia AI, for $80 million in the second quarter of 2024. Amelia offers customizable solutions for businesses and has clients like BNP Paribas, Teva, and Fujitsu. The full-year 2024 revenue guidance is at $80 million, while that for 2025 is $150 million, where $45 million will come from Amelia. In June, the company also bought Allset, an ordering platform for restaurants.

The company has a history of 50% revenue growth per year since 2021. This quarter the company recorded a 53.83% year-over-year increase in sales. The subscriptions and bookings backlog doubled year-over-year, and annual query volume exceeded 5 billion.

Despite growing interest due to AI advancements and partnerships, SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) remains in its growth phase. Investors should be prepared for potential volatility and may need to wait for significant returns. However, it is well-positioned for growth due to the increasing demand for voice AI solutions. As of June 30, 15 hedge funds were long in the company.

9. UiPath Inc. (NYSE:PATH)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 29

UiPath Inc. (NYSE:PATH) is a leading provider of robotic process automation (RPA) software. RPA technology automates repetitive, rule-based tasks, freeing up human workers to focus on more complex and strategic activities, across a range of departments, such as finance, human resources, and customer service.

RPA faces challenges from AI. While RPA automates tasks, AI-based no-code tools offer similar capabilities. This competition impacts its market share. However, UiPath Inc. (NYSE:PATH) itself uses AI to enhance its automation capabilities. Key areas where AI is applied include task mining, document understanding, communications mining, and AI center orchestration.

UiPath Inc. (NYSE:PATH) has dropped about 50% in value this year as the market is losing confidence in the company for 2024. Despite a 10% decline in fiscal-full year 2025 revenue guidance, 29 hedge funds hold long positions in it, with ARK Investment Management holding the largest stake valued at $377,197,499.

The unexpected resignation of CEO, Rob Enslin, is also a reason behind a downward revision in revenue estimates. However, there was a 15.72% year-over-year improvement in revenue in FQ1 2025, recording a revenue of $335.11 million. The earnings per share were $0.13.

8. Bloom Energy Corp. (NYSE:BE)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 29

Bloom Energy Corp. (NYSE:BE) is a leading provider of fuel cell technology, engaged in the making of solid oxide fuel cells, all while using AI to optimize the performance of fuel cell systems, predict maintenance needs, and improve overall efficiency.

Core products include SOFCs (solid oxide fuel cells), which convert natural gas or hydrogen into electricity without combustion, producing only water vapor and heat as byproducts. It is also actively involved in generating clean hydrogen as a fuel source for these fuel cells and/or other applications. The end goal is to help deliver clean, reliable, and cost-effective energy solutions to customers.

These fuel cells provide reliable, sustainable, and efficient power for data centers. They operate independently of the grid, reducing the risk of outages, and can also be integrated into microgrids, providing additional energy security.

In July 2024, the company partnered with CoreWeave, an AI company backed by Nvidia. According to this deal, Bloom Energy Corp. (NYSE:BE) would power CoreWeave’s data center in Illinois, helping it provide cloud solutions for AI. As a result of this deal, the stock surged 1.3% on the 17th of July.

It also partnered with Silicon Valley Power, to supply 20 megawatts of fuel cell-based power to AWS data centers in Santa Clara, which aligned with the adoption of clean energy solutions for data center operations.

In Q2, the company recorded a year-over-year growth of 11.52%, generating $335.77 million in revenue. The loss per share was $0.06. Driven by the expansion of AI-driven data centers and increased regulatory pressure to reduce carbon footprint, affordable fuel cell technology is expected to see significant adoption by tech giants, and analysts estimate a 24% increase in revenue in 2025 and positive earnings of $0.5.

Analysts predict that the company will break even soon and become profitable in 2025, with an expected profit of $26 million. To meet this target, the company needs to grow by 78% year-over-year. Currently, 29 hedge funds are long on it. The largest stake is held by Graham Capital Management, with a position of $51,415,452.

ClearBridge Investments made the following comment about Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE:BE) in its Q3 2022 investor letter:

“We were active in repositioning the portfolio in the quarter as market crosswinds opened idiosyncratic opportunities, adding two new industrials companies. Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE:BE) is an electrical equipment company that makes solid-oxide fuel cell systems for on-site power generation, serving a variety of industries. Its fuel cells convert natural gas, biogas or hydrogen into baseload (non-intermittent) electricity without combustion, so there is low or no carbon emission. We expect significant upside through its ability to support the growing hydrogen economy, with a large opportunity for this in South Korea and meaningful policy support in the U.S. via the IRA, while other markets include biogas, carbon capture and marine transportation. Its natural gas energy server business is growing in the U.S. amid higher grid reliability concerns.”