We recently compiled a list of the 10 Most Popular AI Penny Stocks Under $1. In this article, we are going to take a look at where 2U, Inc. (NASDAQ:TWOU) stands against the other popular AI penny stocks.

Into the AI Market: 

The stock market is rapidly catching on to the apparent artificial intelligence trend during the last year or two. Many businesses are incorporating Artificial Intelligence technologies into their core business models to save costs, improve performance, and flourish in both current markets and emerging ones. Once, venture entrepreneur Marc Andreessen observed that “software is eating the world” by automating entire industries. It is anticipated that artificial intelligence will similarly change software. According to recent research by MIT, the United States is unequally adopting artificial intelligence, with the majority of its application occurring in big businesses and sectors like manufacturing and healthcare.

As per Grand View Research, the global artificial intelligence industry was estimated to be worth $196.63 billion in 2023, and it is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 36.6% between 2024 and 2030.

OpenAI, a private AI startup, has rapidly evolved into a prominent player in this booming market, with its valuation tripling to almost $80 billion in less than ten months following an agreement with Thrive Capital. The AI startup is recognized globally for its cutting-edge AI models, such as ChatGPT, which received a significant 1.806 billion visits in April 2024 as per SimilarWeb, DALL-E, an image-generating model, and Whisper AI for speech recognition. To lead the way in AI technology, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4o, a new AI model, in May 2024. It can engage with text and graphics and have realistic voice conversations. Macquarie’s Fred Havemeyer commended GPT-4o for its “emotional intelligence.” OpenAI’s approach to the AI revolution is unique because it collaborates with tech titans rather than competing against them. OpenAI represents a generation of AI companies linked with the giants due to the computer capacity as well as the massive financing necessary to advance artificial intelligence learning. According to CNBC Disruptor 50 companies, artificial intelligence plays a crucial role in over half of their revenue, with 34 of them describing AI as critically important to more than half of their revenue. 13 companies claimed that generative AI, specifically, is key to the majority of sales. Chairman of Sinovation Ventures, Kai-Fu Lee, expressed his belief that OpenAI would soar to the exceptional heights that a few mega-cap businesses with solid business models can achieve. “OpenAI will likely be a trillion-dollar company in the not-too-distant future.” ”This is by far the most advanced and most amazing technology, compared to anything, by a factor of 10,” Lee stated.

Methodology:

In this article, we first used a stock screener, Finviz, to list down all AI stocks trading under $1 (as of the writing of this article) with a high average trading volume of 500k to 10M. From the resultant dataset, we chose 10 stocks with the highest number of hedge fund investors, using Insider Monkey’s database of 920 hedge funds in Q1 2024 to gauge hedge fund sentiment for stocks. We have used the stock’s Revenue Growth Rate (year-over-year) as a tie-breaker in case two or more stocks have the same number of hedge funds invested.

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)

2U, Inc. (NASDAQ:TWOU)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 10

2U, Inc. (NASDAQ:TWOU), a US-based online learning platform company with global operations and AI integration, reported a 17% drop in total revenue in Q1 2024 to $198.4 million from $238.50 million in the same period the year before. The company attributed this decline to portfolio management activities, which caused some of the programs that were running in 2023 to cease operations in 2024. 2U’s diluted EPS is -$3.90 TTM. Despite a decrease, it is a jump over -$3.93 in 2023 and -$4.17 in 2022. Between 2022 and 2023, the revenue growth rate dropped by -1.78%, from $963.08 million to $945.95 million. On June 6, 2024, the stock price closed at $0.31 per share.

10 out of the 920 hedge funds in Insider Monkey’s database had stock in 2U, Inc. (NASDAQ:TWOU). Mudrick Capital Management is the largest stakeholder in the company, with 1151.92 million shares worth $72,13 million.

One of the most popular AI penny stocks, 2U, has an average volume of 1.82M as of the day of writing this piece, with high growth potential because its stock price has climbed in the last few days, even though it has declined in previous years and over the years.

In general, we think that the market for AI stocks is rising, and although penny stocks are generally risky, they can provide large rewards.

Overall TWOU ranks 3rd on our list of the most popular AI penny stocks under $1. You can visit 10 Most Popular AI Penny Stocks Under $1 to see the other popular AI penny stocks that are on hedge funds’ radar. While we acknowledge the potential of TWOU 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 TWOU 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.