We recently compiled a list of the 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) stands against the other AI stocks.
The United States’ lead in artificial intelligence technology has become questionable after the release of DeepSeek’s AI models. As a direct consequence, the US Commerce Department is now looking into whether the Chinese company used US chips that were not allowed to be shipped to China in the first place. Last week, DeepSeek’s AI model and its free assistant, which the company claimed used less data and power than US models, wreaked havoc in the tech world and resulted in a massive broad market sell-off.
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Investors began questioning the sustainability of the huge investments in AI made by leading tech giants and the significant power demand from power-hungry data centers. DeepSeek’s emergence led to worries that cost-effective AI solutions would erode market share and US tech companies’ profitability. Consequently, a rout sparked that wiped around $1 trillion off U.S. technology stocks.
DeepSeek has claimed that its chatbot performs on par or better than Microsoft-backed OpenAI at a fraction of the cost. However, a report published by NewsGuard has revealed that the chatbot achieved only 17% accuracy in delivering news and information. It further revealed that it repeated false claims 30% of the time and gave vague or useless answers 53% of the time in response to news-related prompts, raising doubts about the claims it initially made.
While clarity on these models is yet to be achieved, the current restrictions on companies such as Nvidia have been in place to stop the most sophisticated chips from reaching China and restrict the country from taking the lead in AI. According to a source reported by Reuters, however, organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of a few countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.
In this regard, Singapore’s trade ministry noted that there is no reason to believe that DeepSeek obtained any export-controlled products from the country. It further noted that it has always upheld the rule of law and acted decisively against those who disobey the rules.
“We expect U.S. companies to comply with U.S. export controls and our domestic legislation. Our customs and law enforcement agencies will continue to work closely with their U.S. counterparts.”
– Singapore’s Trade Ministry
For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds.
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).
A close-up of a server array powering a cloud-services system.
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 44
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) is a cloud services provider that powers AI workloads through its Workers AI platform. On February 3rd, the company announced that it has launched a new, one-click solution for content creators and publishers that aims to preserve the digital history of an image. Users will be able to see how an image was created, and by whom, and even know about edits and resizes—across the Cloudflare network. These digital ‘nutrition labels,’ or Content Credentials, will allow creators to be credited for their work and consumers to be able to easily verify the origin and alterations of digital content. Users of Cloudflare Images, the company’s image storage and optimization solution, can choose to “Preserve Content Credentials,” and safeguard embedded, secure metadata across the entire global Cloudflare network. These transformations will be recorded using public key cryptography, and anyone can verify its digital history using the Adobe Content Authenticity Inspect tool.
“The future of the Internet depends on trust and authenticity. By integrating Content Credentials across our global network, we can help media and news organizations to verify authenticity and maintain ownership of their work, wherever it moves online. This isn’t just about securing individual images—it’s about giving publishers the tools they need to preserve trust and remain relevant in the age of AI.”
-Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO, Cloudflare.
Overall NET ranks 5th on our list of the AI stocks that are making waves on Wall Street. While we acknowledge the potential of NET as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some 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 NET 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.