What started as a pandemic lockdown pastime has become a force Wall Street can’t ignore. Deep in Reddit’s discussion boards and social media forums, retail investors are finding stock picks that beat major Wall Street firms charging huge fees and running elite algorithms. Some are speculative meme stocks, but dismissing all of them is a mistake. The data proves it. JPMorgan found that retail flows hit fresh records in 2025, up about 60% year over year, CNBC reported.

A peer-reviewed study titled “Democratisation of Retail Trading” analyzed 1.6 million posts from Reddit’s WallStreetBets community spanning from January 2018 to March 2022. The researchers compared these investment recommendations to over 16,000 recommendations made by analysts at the top 20 largest investment banks in the world. The study found that WallStreetBets’ average investment returns actually compete with and outperform the best investment banks in certain cases. The researchers looked specifically at S&P 500 stocks and identified the top 15% of best-performing companies during that time period. They discovered that WallStreetBets detected 27 of the 56 top-performing stocks, which ranked it competitively against major institutions despite being a free community.

For this article, we picked growth stocks that social media (Reddit, X, Stocktwist) is excited about. We chose them based on how frequently and seriously they were mentioned, and paid special attention to the reasons retail investors are giving for their 10x potential. With each stock, we have also mentioned its hedge fund sentiment.

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. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 599.2% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 372 percentage points (see more details here).

10. Sellas Life Sciences (NASDAQ:SLS)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 13

Sellas Life Sciences (NASDAQ:SLS) is one of the top favorite stocks social media believes can 10x. It is a biotech company developing a cancer immunotherapy drug called GPS — a treatment that works by training a patient’s own immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells, rather than using traditional chemotherapy. Sellas Life Sciences (NASDAQ:SLS) is currently testing GPS on acute myeloid leukemia, one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of blood cancer, in a large clinical trial called the REGAL trial.

Social media users call this one of the most compelling trial setups they have ever seen. Reddit is excited about this stock because it is not a traditional drug bet — it is a data science and modeling bet. One social media commenter holding 168,000 shares and 2,500 deep-in-the-money call options described it as “the strongest canon of due diligence I’ve ever found for a stock.”

Sellas Life Sciences’ (NASDAQ:SLS) growth catalyst is simple — a successful trial readout would almost certainly trigger a buyout from a major pharmaceutical company. Bulls believe the drug could become a standard of care for leukemia and potentially expand to other cancers, making it an extremely valuable acquisition target. Bears argue that 10x from the current price of around $8-9 is unrealistic, with most sober estimates pointing to a 3-5x return on a buyout rather than a moonshot.

9. Infleqtion Inc (NYSE:INFQ)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 24

Social media believes Infleqtion Inc (NYSE:INFQ) has the potential to 10x in the long term. Infleqtion is a quantum technology company that makes and sells quantum computers, quantum sensors, and quantum software. Its customers include the US Department of Defense, the US Navy, NASA, the UK government, and Nvidia. Its moat is its proprietary neutral-atom platform, which underpins both its computing and sensing products across defense, aerospace, and national security applications.

Infleqtion Inc (NYSE:INFQ) already sells equipment to the US military and has received a $100 million equity investment from the US government. Social media also frequently cites its Nvidia partnership as a key credibility signal.

What makes Infleqtion stand out among competitors is its neutral-atom technology. Infleqtion Inc (NYSE:INFQ) uses lasers to capture and hold atoms — specifically cesium or rubidium — in a restricted space, manipulating them as qubits. Unlike IonQ, which uses electrically charged ions, Infleqtion uses uncharged natural atoms. Because these atoms are identical by nature, they deliver higher fidelity and accuracy than synthetic alternatives. The tradeoff is speed — neutral atoms are slower than superconducting qubits used by IBM and Rigetti — but Infleqtion Inc (NYSE:INFQ) makes up for it with superior accuracy and the ability to operate at room temperature.

8. Fluence Energy (NASDAQ:FLNC)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 31

Fluence Energy (NASDAQ:FLNC) is a global energy storage company that sells large-scale battery systems, grid management software, and AI-driven energy optimization software. Its customers include utilities, renewable energy developers, independent power producers, and increasingly hyperscale data center operators. Its moat is a combination of proprietary AI-based controls software, a fully compliant US domestic supply chain that locks out Chinese competitors under new federal regulations, and an embedded position in the Nvidia/Siemens AI data center reference architecture.

Bulls believe the market is mispricing Fluence Energy (NASDAQ:FLNC) as a commoditized hardware assembler when it has in fact evolved into an AI infrastructure business. The core argument is around its proprietary sub-100ms power-conditioning technology. The key insight is that hyperscalers no longer primarily need battery storage for 4-hour load shifting or backup duration. What they need now is power quality. Nvidia GPU clusters create microsecond-level power fluctuations that grid interconnects cannot handle without tripping breakers. Fluence Energy (NASDAQ:FLNC) has developed a proprietary product that pairs its AI-based controls — Fluence OS and Mosaic — with wide-bandgap MOSFET inverters to deliver sub-100 millisecond response times. This shifts Fluence from hardware aggregator to power-conditioning technology provider.

Recently, the stock jumped after assurance provider DNV confirmed 99.3% availability across Fluence Energy’s (NASDAQ:FLNC) reviewed operating battery energy storage fleets of 50 MW and above, with 98.7% MW-weighted availability across its reviewed global fleet.

7. Tempus AI (NASDAQ:TEM)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 33

Tempus AI (NASDAQ:TEM) runs cancer diagnostic tests and sells the resulting data and AI tools to pharmaceutical companies and research institutions. Its customers are the largest drug developers in the world — AstraZeneca, GSK, and Merck have all signed deals with individual values reaching up to $320 million. But the real moat is the data.

Tempus AI (NASDAQ:TEM) has over 45 million de-identified patient records spanning more than 500 petabytes, built up over years of running diagnostic tests, and no competitor can replicate that overnight. This data is a goldmine for pharma companies that need real-world clinical data to train AI models, design drug trials, and push treatments through FDA approval faster — which is why companies are lining up to sign deals. Net revenue retention was 126% in 2025, meaning existing customers spent 26% more than they did the year before, a strong signal that once a pharma company gets access to the platform, they keep coming back for more.

Aristotle Core Equity Fund stated the following regarding Tempus AI, Inc. (NASDAQ:TEM) in its Q1 2026 investor letter:

“Tempus AI, Inc. (NASDAQ:TEM) is a healthcare technology company specializing in AI-enabled precision medicine solutions. By leveraging AI and machine learning, Tempus connects laboratory test results with clinical data to improve patient care across multiple diseases. The company operates through three main business units: Genomics (Diagnostics), which offers advanced genetic testing and diagnostics; Data and Services, which commercializes de-identified healthcare data and supports clinical trials; and AI Applications, which develops algorithmic diagnostics and clinical decision support tools. Tempus collaborates with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, positioning itself as a key innovator in both oncology and broader healthcare markets.

In our opinion, Tempus stands out as a compelling investment opportunity due to its alignment with key secular trends such as AI, Data Analysis and Monetization, and Personalized Medicine. Since going public in mid-2024, Tempus has demonstrated impressive growth, driven by both organic expansion and strategic acquisitions like Ambry. The company’s robust portfolio in genomics and diagnostics—spanning oncology, hereditary risk assessment and advanced testing—along with its rapidly growing data and applications segment, positions Tempus at the forefront of personalized medicine. The company’s expanding database of over 45 million patient records enhances its value proposition to research partners, and ongoing innovations are expected to drive both revenue and average selling price growth, making Tempus well-situated to capitalize on the evolving healthcare landscape.”

6. Aurora Innovation (NASDAQ:AUR)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 35

Aurora Innovation (NASDAQ:AUR) is an autonomous vehicle technology company that develops and sells self-driving systems for long-haul freight trucks. It does not manufacture trucks — it builds the technology stack that runs on top of them. Its customers include Hirschbach Motor Lines, McLane Company (a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary), Werner, Uber Freight, and four others. Social media believes the stock has 10x potential in the long term because autonomous long-haul trucking is a massive addressable market.

According to some estimates, the current served addressable market — limited to Sun Belt corridors, the Texas Triangle, and hub-to-hub shipping — is estimated at roughly $85 billion through 2030. This would expand significantly as routes and weather conditions broaden.

The Aurora Driver is an intelligent edge platform that acts as the brain of the vehicle, integrating high-performance edge compute, proprietary FirstLight Lidar, radar, and cameras. FirstLight Lidar is Aurora Innovation’s (NASDAQ:AUR) own proprietary sensor — built in-house rather than sourced off the shelf — giving it a hardware differentiation most competitors lack.

Its business model is Driver-as-a-Service. Aurora partners with OEMs, including Volvo and PACCAR to install its technology on trucks at the assembly line. Fleet operators then own and operate the trucks and pay Aurora Innovation (NASDAQ:AUR) a per-mile subscription fee to use the Aurora Driver software. The indicative DaaS price is $0.85 per mile. This means Aurora monetizes recurring usage rather than one-time hardware sales, aligning its economics with how much its customers actually drive.

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