In this article, we will look at some of the worst artificial intelligence stocks trading under $30 with high short interest.
On June 20, Kate Rooney from CNBC reported that the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is increasing spending across the technology sector, particularly in data centers and computing infrastructure. As companies continue to invest heavily in long-term growth projects, investors are paying closer attention to the Federal Reserve policies.
Rooney highlighted how large tech companies had been immune to a restrictive monetary policy stance for a while, given their strong financial positions. Mostly, it was the smaller tech businesses that were more susceptible to the rate increases. However, those megacap technology names are now also becoming sensitive towards the interest rate trends, since they have been depleting their reserves to finance their ambitious spending on data centers.
Rooney highlighted comments from One Point BFG Wealth Partners’ CIO, Peter Boockvar, who believes that such large-scale capital spending has had an impact on investors with a significant portfolio tilt towards the broader technology segment. Boockvar stated:
“Tech investors are not as used to looking at rates. All of a sudden tech investors need to listen to what Kevin Warsh has to say, they need to start paying attention to what the inflation stats are and how the U.S. Treasury market responds to it.”
Rooney noted that major companies, including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet, are increasing AI infrastructure spending as competition within the sector intensifies. These four entities are projected to increase their cumulative spending by almost 80% during 2026, which amounts to $750 billion.
With that background, let’s explore our 10 Worst Artificial Intelligence Stocks Under $30 According to Short Sellers.
Our Methodology
To identify relevant stocks for this article, we screened U.S.-listed artificial intelligence companies with market capitalizations above $2 billion and share prices below $30. Following that, we narrowed the list further to include names with at least 10% short interest as of the June 23 close. Finally, we selected 10 stocks with the highest short interest and ranked them in ascending order.
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 599.2% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 372 percentage points (see more details here).
10. Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (NYSE:ZETA)
Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (NYSE:ZETA) is one of the 10 worst artificial intelligence stocks under $30 according to short sellers.
On June 23, Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (NYSE:ZETA) revealed that the company has formed a strategic alliance with Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR). The aim is to develop an AI infrastructure layer that integrates customer and operational intelligence and marketing execution across enterprises.
Both companies are collaborating towards new benchmarks for agentic marketing by linking up AI infrastructure to Zeta’s data and intelligent decision-making capabilities.
Earlier on June 18, Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (NYSE:ZETA) announced the expansion of Athena to agencies, prior to the Cannes Lions 2026 Festival. The company noted that, as agencies continue to develop and adopt new technologies and partnerships, converting those investments into real-time intelligence continues to be a challenge.
Development of Athena is based on the company’s proprietary identity graph, SuperGraph, which offers customer insights by evaluating signals from around 245 million individuals. The company also highlighted that Athena is able to identify opportunities and make optimal recommendations by combining agency data with the SuperGraph. Moreover, it also enhances performance over the entire customer lifecycle.
Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (NYSE:ZETA) provides enterprises with consumer intelligence and marketing automation software worldwide. The company operates the Zeta Marketing platform and Consumer Data Platform (CDP+) for unified customer profiles. It also offers Zeta Messaging, integrated data management, enterprise-scale delivery, and consumer data support.
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