We recently compiled a list of the 8 AI News Updates Investors Should Not Miss. In this article, we are going to take a look at where CyberArk Software Ltd. (NASDAQ:CYBR) stands against the other AI stocks.

Europe is back and means business in the artificial intelligence race. That’s the sentiment echoed at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris as France President Macron touted a $112.8 billion investment in AI. The massive investment comes as four of the biggest US tech giants plan to spend $325 billion to further strengthen their AI ambitions in 2025.

France’s $112.8 billion underscores Europe’s desire to take on the US and China, which have dominated the AI debate on innovations and investment in recent years. For starters, the US is receiving praise as part of the $500 billion Stargate project as China appears to have an edge on innovation following DeepSeek’s revelation of cost-effective AI models.

Critics of Europe have long argued that the continent has overregulated the tech sector, hindering innovation. Nevertheless, some in the technology sector believe that Europe is headed in the right direction, even though that perception hasn’t completely changed.

“As a European region, at least, we are starting to see global leaders emerge, and that’s the thing we really need,” Victor Riparbelli, CEO of AI video company Synthesia, told CNBC in an interview on Monday.

While there appears to be a tussle or fierce competition between nations to spearhead the AI revolution, China has made it clear that it is willing to work with other countries. Beijing insists it is willing and ready to promote development, safeguard security, and share achievements in the field of artificial intelligence.

According to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s special representative, Zhang Guoqing, AI has become an essential driving force for the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation. China has always participated in global cooperation and governance on AI with a highly responsible attitude.

Corporations between nations instead of competing against each other to control the spoils are key to unlocking the full advantages of the AI revolution. Likewise, economists at Goldman Sachs expect widespread adoption of generative AI to raise US labour productivity by 15% over the next 10 years. It is also likely to unlock about $4.5 trillion in annual US GDP.

AI economic benefits are anticipated to flow to hardware and infrastructure providers early on. Later, they will spread to platform and application developers, and finally, they will manifest as increases in productivity and efficiency throughout the industry as a whole. According to the Goldman Sachs team, the US AI investment cycle will peak at 2% of GDP before declining as the compute costs of running AI queries and training AI models decline. Investment in AI software was expected to rise gradually over time as end-user adoption rose.

According to the Goldman Sachs team’s projections, the US will begin to see productivity gains from generative AI technology in 2027, with the impact peaking in the early 2030s. According to these projections, the US timeline is a few years ahead of other developed markets and important emerging market nations.

“Given that potential cost savings from generative AI are large and the marginal cost of deployment once applications are developed will likely be very small, we see the adoption of generative AI as more of a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if,” Joseph Briggs, co-leader of the Global Economics team.

According to Briggs, the kinds of work tasks that generative AI can automate would save several thousand dollars annually per worker, and Goldman Sachs Research continues to predict that AI adoption will increase in the medium term.

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).

CyberArk Software Ltd. (NASDAQ:CYBR)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 51

CyberArk Software Ltd. (NASDAQ:CYBR) and its subsidiaries develop, market, and sell software-based identity security solutions and services. On February 13th, the company moved to strengthen its prospects in the identity security market with the acquisition of Zilla Security for $165 million plus a $10 million performance-based earn-out. The acquisition paves the way for merging the company’s identity security solutions with Zilla’s modern identity governance and administration solution.

The acquisition should add two key products to CyberArk’s Identity Security Platform—first, Zilla Provisioning offers AI-driven automated access management for onboarding, role transitions, and offboarding. Secondly, Zilla Comply streamlines user access reviews and audit documentation. The integration of the two solutions will address a significant market gap in cloud-native identity management. With its proven 5x faster deployment and 80% lower access review effort, Zilla’s AI-driven strategy puts CyberArk Software Ltd. (NASDAQ:CYBR) is in a strong position to take a sizable chunk of the enterprise IGA market.

CyberArk CEO Matt Cohen stated, “By expanding the CyberArk Identity Security Platform with Zilla’s modern IGA capabilities, we will reshape identity governance with scalable automation that delivers compliance and helps maximize security for the modern enterprise.”

Overall CYBR ranks 6th on our list of the trending AI stocks. While we acknowledge the potential of CYBR as an investment, 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 CYBR but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap.

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