According to the European Commission, the landmark rules on artificial intelligence will be rolled out as planned and will follow the legal timeline in the legislation. This is despite calls from companies such as Meta and Alphabet to delay the AI Act by years.
“I’ve seen, indeed, a lot of reporting, a lot of letters and a lot of things being said on the AI Act. Let me be as clear as possible, there is no stop the clock. There is no grace period. There is no pause. We have legal deadlines established in a legal text. The provisions kicked in February, general purpose AI model obligations will begin in August, and next year, we have the obligations for high risk models that will kick in in August 2026.”
-Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told a press conference.
The Commission plans to propose steps to simplify its digital rules by the end of the year. However, some companies are still concerned that these rules will be expensive and difficult to comply with. While the rules aim to establish clear standards for a technology playing a critical role in major industries, it is yet to be seen how businesses will adapt to this regulatory shift.
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 Q1 2025.
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).
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10. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 57
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is one of the Top 10 AI Stocks in the Spotlight. On July 2, the company announced that Deutsche Telekom, a leading provider of telecommunications and IT services, will implement the AI-powered solution IBM Concert, enabling intelligent automation in patch management and making security tasks smarter and more automatic.
Patches help systems stay secure, relevant, and functional. Without them, there is a chance that software becomes obsolete, unstable, or even vulnerable. While patches are important, handling them can be a challenge. This is where IBM Concert comes in, helping companies reduce their operational costs and the effort needed for patching vulnerabilities. Doing so, they accelerate the speed of response and improve security.
Deutsche Telekom will be using IBM Concert to leverage intelligent resilience for complex IT operations. The solution combines all relevant data and specializations, creating contextual information to enable end-to-end AI-powered automation.
Deutsche Telekom reported a successful pilot implementation of IBM Concert, achieving a 10x reduction in a key metric “Median Time To Patch,” and going from 80 hours per critical vulnerabilities to eight hours.
“Security and trust are the cornerstones of success for all telecommunications companies. IBM Concert incorporates modern AI and automation technologies so that Deutsche Telekom can stay ahead of the dramatically escalating number and complexity of critical vulnerabilities across their Hybrid Cloud platform.”
-Steve Canepa, Global Managing Director at IBM.
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is a multinational technology company and a pioneer in artificial intelligence, offering AI consulting services and a suite of AI software products.
9. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 64
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is one of the Top 10 AI Stocks in the Spotlight. On July 7, Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens downgraded the stock from “Overweight” to “Neutral,” maintaining its price target at $505.
The analysts at the firm said that it doesn’t see a near-term scenario that could meaningfully increase numbers or its terminal multiple. However, it does appreciate the company’s long-term potential as a player in security and IT.
It also said that investors should not be adding shares at the moment. This is because the upside may be limited over the short to medium term.
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is a leader in AI-driven endpoint and cloud workload protection.
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