We recently published a list of Top 10 Trending AI Stocks Amid Latest News and Analyst Ratings. Since Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranks 5th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.

The reality is finally catching up to the AI hype as investors await to see ROI on huge spending on AI chips and infrastructure. Dan Niles, Niles Investment Management founder and portfolio manager, during an interview with CNBC last month, called the decline in Mag. 7 stocks after Q2 earnings representative of a “fundamental shift” in the industry.

“I know it’s popular to talk about AI because these stocks are driving the market, but at a certain point, you want to get a return on all of this money you are investing. And if your forward revenue estimate is going lower not higher but your CapEx is going up, at some point those two things are going to collide.”

Niles said that major tech companies went through a “digestion” period after seeing huge returns during the COVID-19 pandemic days, and he expects the same to happen as we move into the next year.

The analyst said that on an equal-weighted basis, the broader market is up when compared with Mag. 7 stocks. He recommended investors to buy the stocks that would benefit from rate cuts. These include consumer staples, utilities, telecom services, etc.

Niles said the other 493 companies could drive the market to new “all-time record highs.”

For this article, we picked 10 AI trending stocks that are moving after latest analyst ratings and earnings. With each company we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. 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).

Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 165

Dan Niles, Niles Investment Management founder and portfolio manager, said the following about GOOG while talking to CNBC:

“I don’t see how they keep 90% + share in search when you’ve got all of this spending on AI going and you’ve got to believe some of those companies take share.”

Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares slipped recently following reports that OpenAI is working on a web search product called SearchGPT. Before that, the stock fell following earnings despite posting strong numbers. Revenue in the second quarter jumped 14% year over year driven by search and Cloud. At a forward P/E of 22, analysts believe Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) continues to be one of the cheapest AI stocks in the market as its valuation remains depressed amid fears caused by an overreaction.

Despite constant alarms going off about its search business, Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) search revenue jumped about 13.7% in the second quarter year over year. As of the end of June, Google has about 91.06% share of the search engine market, just 1.65% lower than the December 2019 levels.  With AI overviews and other search initiatives, Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) will be able to stave off any competitors given its dominance in the market.

Cloud and YouTube are two key strong catalysts for Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares. During the second quarter, Alphabet’s Cloud revenue rose 28.8% to $10.35 billion, crushing past analysts’ forecasts of $10.16 billion. Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG)  is on the path to reach a $100 billion revenue run-rate from YouTube Ads and Google Cloud by the end of 2024.

Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:

“We also added to Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). The company reported solid financial results with first quarter revenue growth of 15% year-over-year, driven by 14% growth in search, 21% growth in YouTube, and 28% growth in cloud (which accelerated from 26% growth in the fourth quarter). The company has also increased its cost discipline efforts, which drove operating margins to 31.6% (compared to 25% in the first quarter of 2023). With regards to GenAI, while we are cognizant of the potential risks to the dominance of search, we believe that on the range of outcomes, Alphabet remains well positioned through its massive user distribution (9 products with over 1 billion users each), long-standing AI research labs (DeepMind and Google Brain), top AI talent, a solid cloud computing division in Google Cloud, and deep pockets for investing in AI. During the quarter, Alphabet also held its annual I/O conference, where it provided an update on its efforts in AI including: Gemini is now used by 1.5 million developers; model quality is expanding rapidly (e.g., context window is now 2 million tokens of length); the new genomics model, Alphafold 3 can predict structures of molecules and potentially accelerate drug discovery; new TPU6 AI chips has shown a 4.7 times improvement in compute performance compared to the prior generation; and Gemini for workspace is showing early data on a 30% increase in user productivity. Alphabet also has real value in assets such as Waymo, which are not factored into valuation today (and are potentially included at a negative valuation as they currently generate losses, hurting EPS). We continue to believe that the current valuation of Alphabet presents an attractive risk/reward for long-term owners of the business and have therefore increased our position.”

Overall, Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranks 5th on Insider Monkey’s list titled Top 10 Trending AI Stocks Amid Latest News and Analyst Ratings. While we acknowledge the potential of Alphabet Inc Class C (NASDAQ:GOOG), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than GOOG but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: Analyst Sees a New $25 Billion “Opportunity” for NVIDIA and Jim Cramer is Recommending These Stocks.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.