We recently published a list of Top 10 AI Stocks on Investors’ Radar These Days. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) stands against other top AI stocks on investors’ radar these days.

The debate around AI systems hitting a “data wall” or plateau is heating up in the tech industry with many arguing that the performance of AI models is not showing signs of further improvement amid a lack of quality inputs, causing scaling issues in the industry.

CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa recently discussed this debate in a program and said:

“All it feels like anyone is talking about right now in tech is this debate over scaling laws and a data wall, which continues to rage in Silicon Valley. This is the idea that more data and bigger models will always lead to better AI, with some arguing that progress has peaked or is starting to plateau. Put another way, it’s a debate over a core assumption in AI that could have massive implications for the industry, from valuations to the GPUs powering it, and of course, the Nvidia story. I was at the Newcomer AI conference yesterday here in San Francisco. It was the theme of the day, with everyone from Scale AI’s Alexander Wang to Anthropic’s Dario Amodei to Databricks’ Ali Ghodsi weighing in.”

Jensen Huang was also asked about the issue of AI systems hitting a data wall and possible scaling issues in a latest earnings call. Here is what he said:

“A foundation model pre-training scaling is intact and it’s continuing. As you know, this is an empirical law, not a fundamental physical law, but the evidence is that it continues to scale. What we’re learning, however, is that it’s not enough that we’ve now discovered two other ways to scale. One is post-training scaling. Of course, the first generation of post-training was reinforcement learning human feedback, but now we have reinforcement learning AI feedback and all forms of synthetic data generated data that assists in post-training scaling.”

Read Huang’s comments in detail here.

Bosa mentioned some other tech leaders pushing back against the idea of AI hitting a data wall and said:

“…..also acknowledge that this alone isn’t enough to push AI further, and progress will come from post-training scaling, which is the development of AI applications on top of existing models. He and others say this will still require massive amounts of compute power.

An open question remains: will it be as much? A helpful way to frame that next phase of AI development is digestion or innovation. Maybe both are possible, but digestion might suggest a pullback on the huge amounts of spending and capital expenditures we’ve seen over the last few years. Innovation, on the other hand, could mean doubling down, with just another phase of development beginning. It’s still very much an open question.”

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For this article we picked 10 AI stocks currently trending on the back of latest analyst ratings and news. With each stock 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).

Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 158

Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) shares fell recently after data from China showed a decline in foreign-branded smartphone sales for October, Reuters reported. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology reported that sales of foreign-branded smartphones fell 44.25% year-over-year in October to 6.22 million units. According to media reports, a Chinese official recently indicated that foreign companies may face extended approval times unless they collaborate with local firms for artificial intelligence. Reports suggest Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) has explored partnerships with Chinese companies like Baidu (BIDU) and ByteDance (BDNCE).

Morgan Stanley recently called Apple’s current position “challenging,” with KeyBanc and TF International Securities expressing concerns over iPhone sales volume. KeyBanc downgraded Apple to “underweight” with a $200 price target. Almost every bullish case on Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) was built around this assumption: millions of people would rush to upgrade their iPhone because of AI features. But the latest numbers for iPhone 16 do not show much enthusiasm for the new device.

Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been seeing a long-term decline in mobile carrier upgrade rates, especially postpaid, for several years. This suggests that people are holding onto their devices longer, likely due to economic factors, satisfaction with current technology, or a lack of exciting new features in recent models

In the latest earnings call, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook highlighted new features for the iPhone, such as a more comfortable watch band and sleep apnea detection, but none appeared to be major demand drivers for new customers.

Columbia Threadneedle Global Technology Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:

“Shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) increased during the quarter after reporting quarterly results in August that met or exceeded expectations. The company also benefited from holding an investor event in September to introduce the newest iteration of products and accessories. Apple introduced the latest iteration of its flagship model, the iPhone 16, which features updated hardware and a refreshed operating system that integrates AI but will be exclusive to newer iPhone models, which could compel a refresh cycle. The gradual introduction of AI into the Apple product ecosystem is consistent with the company’s historical fast follower approach and represents a new tenant of the investment thesis as the market awaits further information related to the company’s AI strategy.”

Overall, AAPL ranks 5th on our list of top AI stocks on investors’ radar these days. While we acknowledge the potential of AAPL, our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar 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 AAPL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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