In this article, we explore the 11 Best AI Penny Stocks to Buy Right Now.
Funds Society, a media platform and meeting point for wealth and asset management professionals, published a report on February 10, 2026, in which it noted that major cloud providers and OpenAI have earmarked more than $1.6 trillion for artificial-intelligence infrastructure between 2025 and 2028. The report, dubbed “AI in 2026”, added that the investments are already improving digital advertising, e-commerce, and cloud services.
Interestingly, Funds Society is not alone in pointing out this huge build-out scale. On February 3, Gartner stated that it expects worldwide IT spending in 2026 to increase by 10.8%, touching $6.15 trillion. Of particular interest is what John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, said. He stated that a huge chunk of the IT spending will be AI-adjacent. That is, a lot of the money will be spent on a sector that links to AI in one way or another. For example, Gartner anticipates server spending to grow 36.9% year over year, and total data center spending to increase 31.7% past $650 billion.
Despite these humongous spending figures, the Wall Street Journal noted in a February 9 report that “investors aren’t exactly thrilled.” Of all the big spenders, the Journal noted, only Meta’s stock rose after its Q4 FY2025 earnings release. Others saw their shares’ value plunge as deep as 14%. According to the Journal, investors are worried about the overall outlook for AI, punishing the tech giants for it.
This explains why some think that those who are willing to look beyond the mega caps may find opportunities. These opportunities may lie in smaller AI-focused companies, some of them with early-stage innovations that could offer the next breakout stock. This article will highlight some of the AI penny stocks that warrant investor attention.
Our Methodology
To create this list, we analyzed financial media reports and online rankings, and used stock screeners to identify artificial-intelligence companies. We then filtered for stocks trading at or below $5 as of February 11, 2026. We then shortlisted the 11 best names by looking at their upside potential and selected the stocks with the highest upside. We also considered institutional conviction based on hedge fund holdings as of Q3 2025. The stocks are ranked from the lowest to the highest upside potential.
Note: The stock’s price and upside potential data are as of February 11, 2026.
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 427.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 264 percentage points (see more details here).
Best AI Penny Stocks to Buy Right Now
11. Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERI)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 11
Stock Price: $3.39
Upside Potential: 138.81%
Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERI) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 11, Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERI) announced its aiWARE platform and Data Refinery will support the AI agent economy by processing unstructured audio and video data, enforcing governance, and creating AI-ready assets.
aiWARE orchestrates multiple AI engines with policy-based controls and audit logs, while Data Refinery enriches raw content with rights and provenance information. Used in regulated environments, including work with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Veritone’s tools serve industries such as media, entertainment, public sector, and talent acquisition.
On January 29, Veritone, Inc. announced that its Veritone Data Refinery (VDR) processed 22.2 trillion tokens during the second half of 2025. This performance points to a more than 3.5x increase in volume compared with the first half of the year, the company said. The VDR platform that helps customers convert unstructured data into AI-ready assets.
According to Veritone, the milestone is evidence of a high adoption rate of VDR. These organizations use the platform to index and format large datasets such as text, media, and logs into tokens that can be used to train and refine AI models. Veritone said the growth in data processing volume signals increasing demand for premium, licensed data from sectors including media, entertainment, and production. In these spaces, the company stated, high-quality and proprietary data is becoming more valuable for AI training.
The company noted the broader market opportunity for data monetization. It cited research that expects the AI training dataset market to expand from about $7.48 billion in 2026 to over $52 billion within the next decade. The research stated that the growth will be driven by enterprise needs for licensed and ethical data sources.
Separately, on January 14, Veritone said its platform is positioned to support the Department of War’s newly released AI-First, modular, open-architecture strategy. The department issued the strategy in a January 9 memo for senior Pentagon leadership.
In the memo, the Department of War called for accelerating the adoption of artificial intelligence across operations. It emphasized “AI-First” processes, modular systems, and open architectures that enable interoperability, rapid experimentation, and component replacement without vendor lock-in.
In this regard, Veritone stated that the design principles of its aiWARE platform align to this strategy. This enables organizations to orchestrate disparate AI models, data sources, and workflows.
Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERI) is an enterprise artificial intelligence company best known for its aiWARE operating system. The platform orchestrates AI models to process and analyze unstructured data. Its AI solutions are applied across industries including media and entertainment, government, legal, and compliance.
10. ZenaTech, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZENA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 1
Stock Price: $2.94
Upside Potential: 152.71%
ZenaTech, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZENA) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 10, ZenaTech, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZENA) said it has integrated drone technology into its land surveying services. This integration, said ZenaTech, specifically targets national homebuilders, and that it leverages the company’s Drone as a Service (DaaS) platform to dramatically accelerate permit-ready survey delivery.
According to ZenaTech, the initiative addresses the issue of survey turnaround times, which has been a critical bottleneck in residential construction for quite some time. Typical survey turnaround times take up to 10 days, the company said. However, with the new initiative, ZenaTech aims to deliver completed permit-ready survey data in three days or less.
ZenaTech will enable this expansion through Cardinal Civil Resources, a land surveying firm acquired in 2025. The DaaS builder service offerings cover several surveying tasks, including topography, plot plans, boundary validation, zoning compliance, and jurisdiction-specific formatting.
Meanwhile, on February 3, ZenaTech said it had signed an offer to acquire a Virginia-based land surveying company. The company has an established customer base in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
ZenaTech stated that the acquisition, when completed, will strengthen its DaaS footprint in the Washington, D.C. metro region. As a result, the company plans to expand opportunities to offer its DaaS solutions to federal, state and municipal government agencies.
ZenaTech, Inc. (NASDAQ:ZENA) is a Canada-based technology company specializing in artificial intelligence-powered drones, enterprise SaaS platforms, and quantum computing solutions. Its AI-driven drone technology underpins its DaaS model, which supports applications in defense, land surveying, and public safety.
9. Inuvo, Inc. (NYSE:INUV)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 2
Stock Price: $1.98
Upside Potential: 203.03%
Inuvo, Inc. (NYSE:INUV) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 6, Inuvo, Inc. (NYSE:INUV) filed a registration statement with the SEC to register up to 5,000,000 shares of common stock. These shares, as per the statement, may be sold by a selling stockholder rather than by the company itself.
Inuvo detailed that the registered shares are issuable upon conversion of a $3,333,333 convertible note. In other words, the stockholder holding that note could convert it into shares and resell those shares under the registration. The convertible note in question converts at $3.10 per share, subject to customary adjustments. There is a floor price of $0.736 per share below which conversion cannot occur. Because the shares are being registered for resale by the selling stockholder, Inuvo will not receive any proceeds from the eventual sales of these shares under this filing.
Separately, on January 30, H.C. Wainwright analyst Scott Buck cut the price target on Inuvo to $6 from $10 and maintained a Buy rating. Buck took the action after Inuvo released the preliminary figures of its Q4 FY2025 earnings.
In the report, revenue came in at $14.0 million, far below the $27.3 million that Wall Street was expecting. Inuvo cited the revenue miss as part of broader headwinds, including an intentional pullback in the company’s Platform product line. This pullback contributed to full-year 2025 revenue of about $86.0 million against a target of $100.0 million, noted the company. Buck noted that these revenue challenges extended into January 2026, and described the preliminary earnings as disappointing.
Inuvo, Inc. (NYSE:INUV) is an advertising technology company that develops and commercializes artificial intelligence solutions for digital marketing. Its flagship product, IntentKey, is an AI-powered consumer intent recognition system that analyzes large-scale data to identify and target in-market audiences across devices and formats.
8. Bit Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ:BTBT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 20
Stock Price: $1.74
Upside Potential: 211.04%
Bit Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ:BTBT) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 6, Bit Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ:BTBT) disclosed its Ethereum, or ETH, treasury and staking results for January 2026, and reported that, as of the end of the month, it held approximately 155,239.4 ETH in total crypto treasury. Based on the $2,449 closing price for ETH on January 31, the market value of the company’s holdings was approximately $380.2 million.
Bit Digital stated that the average acquisition cost for its entire ETH position was around $3,045 per token. It added that about 138,266 ETH, roughly 89% of its holdings, was staked with Ethereum network validators by month-end. Staking operations generated approximately 344.0 ETH in rewards during the month, stated Bit Digital, and added that this corresponds to an annualized yield of roughly 2.9% on the staked ETH balance.
In late January, Bit Digital said it was transitioning away from Bitcoin mining and redirecting its business toward Ethereum-centric activities. It is also making in-roads in artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company explained that the developments in its operations throughout 2025 and early 2026 informed this direction.
Management described the company’s evolution into what it called a “Strategic Asset Company” centered on Ethereum treasury, staking and AI infrastructure growth. It is no longer a traditional mining company, management noted. The company exited the Bitcoin mining business, concluding that the exercise had become less efficient use of capital. Instead, it would focus on more scalable and yield-oriented opportunities tied to Ethereum and compute infrastructure.
Bit Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ:BTBT) is a digital infrastructure company that integrates artificial intelligence into its GPU-based computing operations. The firm operates data centers across North America that support AI workloads alongside its established Bitcoin mining business.
7. HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:HIVE)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 9
Stock Price: $2.30
Upside Potential: 215.13%
HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:HIVE) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 5, HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:HIVE) released operational results for January 2026 in which it reported a 290% year over year increase in hashrate. The hashrate averaged 22.2 exahash per second (EH/s) and peaked at 23.7 EH/s, up from 5.7 EH/s a year earlier.
During the same period, HIVE produced 297 Bitcoin, a 191% increase compared to January 2025. This happened even as global Bitcoin mining difficulty rose about 30% year over year, noted management. Management added that the company’s average daily Bitcoin production this January was 9.6 BTC per day, and its fleet maintained more than 2% of the global Bitcoin network hashrate throughout the month.
HIVE reported that its fleet efficiency averaged 17.5 joules per terahash (J/TH) and that its rigs produced approximately 13.4 BTC per EH/s of hashrate. Management attributed this robust operational performance to the company’s geographically diversified mining infrastructure. The infrastructure spans multiple continents and time zones, which helps maintain uptime and production consistency.
On January 26, Keefe Bruyette downgraded Hive Digital to Market Perform from Outperform and cut its price target to $3.50 from $11.
In a different update, on January 13, HIVE expanded into Paraguay. The company executed the expansion through a strategic joint venture with Paraguay’s leading telecommunications operator to launch a new AI cloud platform.
As part of the expansion, said HIVE, the partnership will launch a purpose-built artificial intelligence “BUZZ Cloud” platform in Asunción, Paraguay’s capital. This will provide high-performance computing and AI infrastructure to support AI training, inference, and data-intensive workloads.
HIVE Digital Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:HIVE) is a blockchain and digital infrastructure company that integrates artificial intelligence into its GPU-based computing operations. The firm builds and operates next-generation data centers powered by clean energy across Canada, Sweden, and Paraguay. These support both AI workloads and Bitcoin mining.
6. Knightscope, Inc. (NASDAQ:KSCP)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 2
Stock Price: $3.58
Upside Potential: 289.61%
Knightscope, Inc. (NASDAQ:KSCP) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 10, H.C. Wainwright reiterated its Buy rating and $12.00 price target on Knightscope Inc. (NASDAQ: KSCP), pointing to acquisitions as a key growth driver. The firm noted Knightscope’s recent move to retain a buy-side investment bank, signaling that deals could materialize as early as this year. While no timeline was set, Wainwright believes this proactive approach could accelerate growth beyond organic expansion.
Knightscope’s financials support such a strategy, with $20.4 million in cash reported on its balance sheet as of Q3 2025. While the company could fund smaller acquisitions outright, Wainwright expects Knightscope to use a mix of cash and stock to align long-term interests with targets. The firm anticipates Knightscope will pursue businesses offering complementary technologies, customer bases, or strong standalone performance, with the right deal potentially boosting adoption of its security robots.
Earlier, on February 5, Knightscope announced it had engaged Lake Street Capital Markets as its exclusive buy-side advisor to guide acquisitions of complementary businesses and technologies. The company also released an updated investor presentation outlining its long-term strategy, operating model, and growth priorities. CEO William Santana Li emphasized Knightscope’s focus on scaling into a leading integrated security services platform, with Lake Street helping identify opportunities to strengthen its technology stack and service capabilities.
Knightscope is a U.S.-based security technology company developing the nation’s first Autonomous Security Force. Its platform integrates autonomous machines, advanced software, and human expertise to protect people, property, and infrastructure while lowering costs.
5. Rezolve AI PLC (NASDAQ:RZLV)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 14
Stock Price: $2.59
Upside Potential: 322.96%
Rezolve AI PLC (NASDAQ:RZLV) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 10, Rezolve AI PLC (NASDAQ:RZLV) finalized a complete acquisition of Reward Loyalty UK Limited. The company said it paid $230 million in cash, using existing cash resources without issuing equity or taking on external financing. This non-dilutive, all-cash deal is expected to be EBITDA-accretive and self-financing from completion, Rezolve added.
Rezolve projects that the acquisition will add approximately $90 million of EBITDA-accretive revenue for the FY2025. In other words, the company expects its current revenue base to expand substantially. This is because Reward’s platform reaches tens of millions of active cardholders through partnerships with institutions such as Barclays and NatWest. The platform delivers personalized offers and loyalty experiences via banks and payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
Rezolve’s CEO Daniel M. Wagner, stated that integrating Reward advances the company’s core AI commerce strategy. They will achieve this goal by embedding Rezolve’s conversational commerce and AI engagement capabilities deeper into everyday consumer spend across retail, banking, and payment ecosystems.
Separately, on January 21, Rezolve successfully closed a previously announced $250 million registered direct financing round. The company noted that the demand from investors exceeded the amount offered.
Rezolve stated that the financing was completed pursuant to a shelf registration statement previously declared effective by the SEC on December 19, 2025. The company will use the net proceeds to pursue disciplined mergers and acquisitions, accelerate enterprise deployments globally, support customer onboarding, and scale infrastructure to meet production demand.
Rezolve AI PLC (NASDAQ:RZLV) provides generative artificial intelligence solutions targeted at the retail and e-commerce sectors in the UK and the US. Its AI-powered platform enables retailers, brands, and manufacturers to create dynamic, personalized connections with consumers across devices and locations.
4. CXApp Inc. (NASDAQ:CXAI)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 6
Stock Price: $0.24
Upside Potential: 400.00%
CXApp Inc. (NASDAQ:CXAI) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 5, CXApp Inc. (NASDAQ:CXAI) announced a strategic partnership with TouchSource, a provider of digital directories and wayfinding solutions.
According to CXApp, the deal will allow it to integrate its agentic artificial intelligence and workplace intelligence platform with TouchSource’s nationwide digital directory network. The network includes over 11,000 deployments across US commercial properties. On its part, CXApp will contribute agentic AI technology that can proactively guide employees and visitors, surface relevant information, and streamline daily workflows. For TouchSource, the firm will provide its in-venue digital directory and wayfinding infrastructure as the physical touchpoints where AI-driven interactions occur.
The combined product will extend AI-driven assistance beyond traditional workplace apps into the built environment. Both companies plan to collaborate on joint marketing, sales, and product strategy initiatives to drive adoption of the integrated solution.
Meanwhile, on January 30, CXApp issued 4,616,481 shares of common stock to Avondale Capital, LLC in a private placement transaction. The transaction was completed over several days, between January 26 and January 28, 2026.
CXApp said it issued the shares at $0.24024 each, which resulted in a total settlement value of around $1.1 million for Avondale Capital. It said that it conducted the issuance as an unregistered sale of equity securities. The company relied on Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933, which exempts certain transactions from public registration requirements.
CXApp Inc. (NASDAQ:CXAI) is an enterprise software company that integrates artificial intelligence into workplace experience solutions. Its CXAI Platform includes AI-powered tools such as CXAI BTS, a core engine for automation and compliance, and CXAI-VU, a generative AI analytics platform that delivers insights into workplace utilization, employee engagement, and productivity.
3. Blaize Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:BZAI)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 13
Stock Price: $1.26
Upside Potential: 628.35%
Blaize Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:BZAI) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On February 11, Blaize Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:BZAI) named Stephen Patak Chief Revenue Officer to lead global revenue and go-to-market strategy as the AI infrastructure firm expands across public and private sector markets.
On January 27, Blaize Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:BZAI) signed a strategic MoU with Nokia Solutions and Networks Singapore Pte. Ltd. targeting the Asia Pacific region. The non-binding agreement established a collaborative framework under which the companies will jointly explore, develop, and deploy edge and hybrid AI inference solutions. These solutions will target real-world production environments across the Asia Pacific markets.
The deal stipulates that Blaize will provide its programmable AI inference hardware and software platform. For its part, Nokia will contribute its networking, automation, and cloud infrastructure expertise. Together, the companies aim to enable Practical AI and Physical AI systems that operate reliably at the network edge and in hybrid cloud environments. This initiative will address needs for low latency, energy efficiency, and operational resilience in applications such as telecom, industrial automation, and smart infrastructure.
Later that day, on January 27, Blaize filed a shelf registration statement on Form S-3 with the SEC that would allow the company to offer and sell up to $250 million worth of securities. According to Blaize, the registration covers a “mixed” shelf of multiple types of securities. These include common stock, preferred stock, debt securities, stock purchase contracts, warrants, rights, and units. As such, the company will be able to raise capital in various ways over time as markets and needs dictate.
Blaize Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:BZAI) provides artificial intelligence-enabled edge computing solutions. Its portfolio includes programmable AI processors and computing platforms designed for applications such as computer vision, advanced video analytics, and AI inference across industries like enterprise, industrial, defense, and automotive.
2. Lantern Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 3
Stock Price: $2.71
Upside Potential: 727.81%
Lantern Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRN) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On January 20, the FDA granted Lantern Pharma, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:LTRN) LP-284 an Orphan Drug Designation (ODD). LP-284 is an investigational small-molecule therapy for treating soft tissue sarcomas.
According to Lantern Pharma, the ODD designation applies in the United States under the FDA’s orphan drug program. The program supports the development of treatments for diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people. This orphan drug status for LP-284 is the third such designation for this molecule; others are for mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) in January 2023 and high-grade B-cell lymphoma (HGBL) in November 2023. It is also the sixth overall orphan designation awarded to Lantern Pharma’s clinical pipeline.
In a different update, on January 12, Lantern Pharma established an Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence and Advanced Agentic Labs in Bengaluru, India. The goal, said the company, is to industrialize and scale its proprietary RADR AI platform for global biopharma use.
The company plans the Bengaluru facility to act as a global scale-up hub for RADR. It will use it as the base for expanding computational capacity, large-scale data engineering, and development of machine learning-ready disease models. This platform will be integrated “more deeply” with pharmaceutical and academic partners worldwide, the company stated.
The RADR platform currently integrates hundreds of billions of oncology-focused data points, sophisticated machine learning algorithms, and curated disease models. All of these come together to create a system that identifies biomarkers, predicts drug response, and designs optimized clinical strategies.
Lantern Pharma, Inc. (NASDAQ:LTRN) is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that leverages artificial intelligence, machine learning, and genomics to accelerate oncology drug discovery and development. Its proprietary RADR AI platform analyzes billions of data points to identify biomarkers, predict drug responses, and optimize clinical trial design.
1. FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NOTE)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 7
Stock Price: $1.22
Upside Potential: 801.64%
FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NOTE) is one of the best AI penny stocks to buy right now. On January 14, FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NOTE) completed the migration of all customers from its legacy FiscalNote platform to its new PolicyNote platform. The company noted that the transition was executed with minimal customer churn. In other words, few, if any, customers left during the migration process.
According to FiscalNote, PolicyNote is a unified, AI-powered policy intelligence platform. It consolidates FiscalNote’s previous tools into a single system, and the difference is that the latter provides a more consistent, scalable user experience for legislative, regulatory, and policy monitoring workflows.
Since the migration, said FiscalNote, there has been stronger user engagement, including a 252% increase in the portion of customers accessing PolicyNote on a weekly basis. It added that users are increasingly using AI-powered features within PolicyNote. For instance, 34% of search sessions now generate custom Impact Summaries specific to an organization’s context, and advanced analytical tools such as Bill Comparison and Similar & Related Bills have seen usage nearly double since launch, said FiscalNote.
Management framed the migration as a key milestone in FiscalNote’s product-led growth strategy. According to Josh Resnik, the company CEO, consolidating tools under PolicyNote will accelerate innovation. It will also simplify customer workflows and strengthen long-term customer value.
FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NOTE) is a technology and data company that applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver legal, regulatory, and policy intelligence. Its AI-powered platforms combine analytics, workflow tools, and expert research to help enterprises monitor policy changes, manage regulatory risk, and optimize advocacy campaigns.
While we acknowledge the potential of FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:NOTE) as an investment, 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 NOTE and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 13 Best Affordable Tech Stocks to Buy Right Now and 10 Best Affordable Long Term Stocks to Buy According to Hedge Funds.
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