We recently published a list of the 10 AI Stocks Catching Wall Street’s Attention. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) stands against other AI stocks that are catching Wall Street’s attention.

Beijing is reportedly boosting domestic AI firms that have received overseas recognition. In its latest, the Chinese artificial intelligence startup Manus was featured for the first time in a state media broadcast. The company has recently registered its China-facing AI assistant.

Manus gained attention in the tech world when it released what it claimed to be the world’s first general AI agent. It stated that it could handle complex tasks with much less prompting compared to chatbots from DeepSeek or ChatGPT.

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Investors are celebrating the company as another breakthrough following the low-cost AI models from DeepSeek. However, its availability remained limited after launch. Users aiming to test Manus were frustrated since the product could only be tested with an invitation-only arrangement. Such was the scarcity that critics accused the Manus team of intentionally deploying scarcity marketing tactics.

“The current invite-only mechanism is due to genuinely limited server capacity at this stage.”

-Manus AI’s product partner Zhang Tao.

Nevertheless, Beijing has been supporting Manus’ rollout within China, much like its stance on DeepSeek’s success. On March 20, State broadcaster CCTV devoted television coverage to Manus for the first time. It published a video on the difference between its AI agent and DeepSeek’s AI chatbot.

The company has also completed the registration for its AI assistant Monica. Registration is required for generative AI apps in China, with Manus clearing an important regulatory hurdle.

All generative AI applications released in China are required to abide by strict rules. These rules exist to ensure that these products do not generate content considered sensitive or damaging by Beijing.

Despite its success, Manus has been publicly questioned for the originality of its technology. This is because the product is based on existing large language models (LLMs), whose details the team did not disclose. This is different from the foundation model innovation from DeepSeek.

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. The hedge fund data is as of Q4 2024.

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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points  (see more details here).

Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 126

Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is an automotive and clean energy company that leverages advanced artificial intelligence in its autonomous driving technology and robotics initiatives. One of Tesla’s strongest backers on Wall Street believes Musk is having a “moment of truth” at his company due to a crisis that he has created by spending too much time in the Trump administration.

“Musk needs to change course here … Tesla’s future depends on it.”

-Dan Ives

In order to get the company back on track, Ives said that two things need to happen. First, Musk needs to formally announce that he will balance his role as leader of the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force and CEO of Tesla so that it can “take the heat off Musk.”

“Musk needs to make a statement and his actions speak louder than words. We would expect this to happen either before or during the 1Q earnings conference call in early May.”

The second thing Musk must do is provide a “roadmap” for the lower-priced EVs Tesla has been promising since last year. These are slated for production in 2025.

Considering how autonomous is a major factor in most analysts’ bull cases for the stock, he also wants to know more about the unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) Robotaxi rollout coming to Austin, Texas, in June.

While there has been news that Tesla has received an initial permit to begin ride-hail testing with Tesla employees in piloted cars, the news came from California regulators rather than the company.

“With a Model Y refresh, inventory issues, and a host of demand issues with Musk brand damage a worry … there is one person Tesla investors need to hear from … Musk.”

Overall, TSLA  ranks 7th on our list of AI stocks that are catching Wall Street’s attention. While we acknowledge the potential of TSLA 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 time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than TSLA  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.