We recently compiled a list of the Top 12 Trending AI Stocks on Latest News and Ratings. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) stands against the other trending AI stocks.
Donald Trump is turning out to be the spark to take artificial intelligence investments to new heights. Just days after repealing an executive order to regulate AI risks, the US president unveiled a $500 billion private sector initiative. Stargate is the project that underscores how companies are racing against time to position themselves amid the AI revolution.
“The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to [build] new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States,” OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank said in a joint statement. “This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”
The new AI initiative, which includes several leading AI developers, including ChatGPT creator OpenAI, paves the way for the construction of data centres needed to power and support various AI models. With Goldman Sachs estimating that AI will represent 19% of data center power demand by 2028, tech giants are racing to construct and secure data center compute capacity.
The growing investment comes amid significant technological advancements made in AI, especially in machine learning and generative AI models like ChatGPT. Investments are expected to soar as companies look to gain a front seat amid the revolution and strengthen their competitive edge. However, it’s unclear if these investments will pay off proportionately.
The cost of training a single frontier AI model is rising exponentially, from $1,000 in 2017 to almost $200 million in 2024. The increase comes amid consistent returns to scale in AI model training data, compute capacity, and model complexity. Even though unit costs per computing operation have rapidly decreased over the same period, costs could still reach billions of dollars by 2030. By the middle of the 2030s, the hardware costs of the world’s AI infrastructure might surpass $1 trillion.
Amid the escalating cost concerns, physical artificial intelligence has emerged as the next frontier of AI investing. Companies are increasingly investing in robotics makers, auto suppliers and specialty semiconductor companies.
The AI technology began with search bots and has since advanced to “agentic AI,” which includes research assistants and customer support agents. Investors examining the cutting edge of this technology are now concentrating on interactions in the real world with autonomous devices that use artificial intelligence, such as self-driving cars, drones, and robot nurses.
“As you go into 2025, agentic AI is that next inflection point here before you hit that physical AI moment … like with everything else in the world, you have to crawl before you can walk and then run,” said CFRA senior equity analyst Angelo Zino
The soaring investments around AI have also given rise to exciting investment opportunities. Likewise, investors are increasingly jostling for positions in tech giants and little-known companies with exposure to revolutionary technology.
Our Methodology
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 cutting-edge computer lab full of IT experts monitoring the security of multiple systems.
Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 64
Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) is a leading cybersecurity vendor offering comprehensive platforms and services backed by artificial intelligence. Its stock is experiencing an upward trend in the aftermath of analysts at Citigroup reiterating a Buy rating on the stock on January 17th.
The buy rating comes amid expectations that Palo Alto Networks, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:PANW) will enjoy robust growth as its market share in the cybersecurity sector increases. The stock is expected to more than double in the next five years, driven by a 17% compound annual growth rate in free cash flow. Supporting the estimates is the fact that the company is increasingly investing in AI-powered solutions.
Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) is increasingly investing in AI and attracting strong interest going by the $100 million plus deal with UK Home Office. Over the last ten years, the company has developed into a more complete security platform, incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI/ML) capabilities into a growing range of cloud-based products. The company’s Precision AI framework aims to transform cybersecurity by detecting and responding to threats on its own.
Overall PANW ranks 4th on our list of the trending AI stocks on latest news and ratings. While we acknowledge the potential of PANW as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than PANW 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 was originally published at Insider Monkey.