A new open-source model from Mistral AI is shaking things up in the tech world. This groundbreaking model outperforms comparable models like Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini, delivering inference speeds of 150 tokens per second. Mistral Small 3.1 surpasses the performance of leading small proprietary models across dimensions such as handling text, understanding multimodal inputs, supporting multiple languages, and managing long contexts, all that with low latency and cost efficiency.
Shifting focus to China, Tencent has recently captured attention with its suite of new artificial intelligence tools capable of converting text and images into 3D visuals. The company has released five open-source models based on its Hunyuan3D-2.0 technology, including “turbo” versions that can generate 3D visuals within 30 seconds while maintaining high precision and quality.
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Like many other Chinese firms, Tencent is advancing China’s position in the AI arms race by expanding its capital expenditures. According to Tencent President Martin Lau, capital spending would rise to the “low teens” as a percentage of revenue, and artificial intelligence will be a key focus of strategic investments.
“We will continue to increase our AI investments, increasing investment in our proprietary Hunyuan model while expanding our contributions in multimodal and open-source capabilities.” –Martin Lau.
Meanwhile, once an AI leader in China, Baidu is also striving hard to regain its position in the tech world. The company has released two new free-to-use artificial intelligence models, including its first reasoning-focused model. The move comes ahead of its plans to move toward an open-source strategy.
According to an article by The Financial Times on why China is suddenly flooding the markets with AI models, retaliation appears to be the driving force. When the US tightened its grip on advanced artificial intelligence technologies in January, it blocked off China’s access to advanced AI chips and locked proprietary models behind trade barriers.
Even though it seemed that China would retaliate by doubling down on secrecy, it’s doing quite the opposite, and with good reason. Chinese tech groups are seemingly creating an ecosystem where developers can continuously revamp their models. Provided open-source becomes powerful enough, there would be no reason to pay for closed models if free, equally capable alternatives exist.
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).
Photo of Collision’s opening session courtesy Stephen McCarthy/Collision via Sportsfile.
10. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 60
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. On March 18, the company announced a new collaboration with NVIDIA, including planned new integrations based on the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design, to enhance enterprise AI capabilities.
These collaborations and integrations will help enterprises leverage data effectively to help build, scale, and manage generative AI workloads and agentic AI applications. The new storage capabilities for unstructured data, planned integrations with Watsonx, and IBM consulting capabilities for agentic reasoning and other AI workloads aim to accelerate AI at scale. The end goal is to create an intelligent, scalable system that supports real-time AI processing and develops more responsive and interactive applications.
“IBM is focused on helping enterprises build and deploy effective AI models and scale with speed. Together, IBM and NVIDIA are collaborating to create and offer the solutions, services and technology to unlock, accelerate, and protect data – ultimately helping clients overcome AI’s hidden costs and technical hurdles to monetize AI and drive real business outcomes.”
-Hillery Hunter, CTO and General Manager of Innovation, IBM Infrastructure.
9. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 77
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) is a leader in AI-driven endpoint and cloud workload protection. On March 18, the company announced that it is collaborating with Nvidia to advance agentic AI in cybersecurity. The company announced groundbreaking agentic AI innovations built on NVIDIA AI software, leading the next generation of cybersecurity. By utilizing Nvidia’s NIM microservices, CrowdStrike Charlotte AI Detection Triage was able to automate detection triage at 2x the speed of its initial launch with 50% fewer compute resources, dropping alert fatigue and maximizing SOC efficiency.
These AI innovations and initiatives from CrowdStrike that are accelerated by NVIDIA AI software and tools aim to deliver faster triage, enable smarter threat detection, and provide AI-driven security automation. In addition, the partnership will also explore NVIDIA Llama Nemotron reasoning models to enhance detection accuracy, enabling security teams to halt attacks with greater speed and precision.
“The future of cybersecurity is agentic AI—where advanced reasoning models power intelligent automation to work seamlessly with human analysts to stop breaches faster than ever. By combining CrowdStrike’s AI-native Falcon platform with NVIDIA AI, we’re working to deliver the next evolution in security operations. This is just the beginning—together, we’re redefining how organizations scale, secure and accelerate their defenses with the power of agentic AI.”
-Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike.
8. Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 79
Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) offers strategy and consulting services. On March 17, the company announced that it has expanded its AI Refinery™ platform by launching an AI agent builder, allowing business users to quickly build and customize agents. The company is also expanding its collection of pre-configured industry agent solutions to allow clients to scale networks of AI agents across the enterprise. Accenture plans to develop more than 50 industry-specific AI agent solutions in the coming months, and more than 100 solutions by the end of the year.
The new Agent Builder is part of the AI Refinery and is built on Nvidia AI Enterprise, Nvidia’s end-to-end, cloud-native software platform. Clients will be able to create and customize agent teams driven by changing business needs and market conditions, and that too, without the need coding for or waiting for support from engineering or technical teams.
“We are seizing the significant opportunity to help our clients prioritize bold, high-impact initiatives that tackle core business challenges by reinventing processes end-to-end with generative AI and agentic technology. Accenture continues to double-down on new innovations like agent builder on our AI Refinery platform to empower organizations and decision-makers with the flexibility to drive business value faster, with agents that can observe the environment, apply reason, continuously improve and take action.”
-Lan Guan, chief AI officer, Accenture.
7. Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 84
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is an American technology company that provides information technology and networking services. On March 18, the company unveiled an AI factory architecture with NVIDIA that embeds security within all layers, from the application to the workload, and the infrastructure. Building on the expanded partnership that was launched last month, the two companies are developing the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA to streamline how enterprises deploy, manage, and secure AI infrastructure at any scale.
To secure the infrastructure and software for developing and delivering AI applications, there was a need for a new architecture that embeds security at all layers of the AI stack and also expands and adapts to changes in underlying infrastructure. Cisco and NVIDIA’s partnership on the NVIDIA Spectrum-XTM Ethernet networking platform serves as the base for the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA. Together, the two companies will provide customers the flexibility to build and secure data centers to develop and run AI workloads.
“AI can unlock groundbreaking opportunities for the enterprise. To achieve this, the integration of networking and security is essential. Cisco and NVIDIA’s trusted, innovative solutions empower our customers to harness AI’s full potential simply and securely.”
-Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO, Cisco.
6. 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 the most notable analyst calls on Tuesday, March 19, was for Tesla, Inc. Cantor Fitzgerald upgraded the stock to “Overweight” from Neutral with an unchanged price target of $425. The rating upgrade follows the firm’s recent visit to the company’s Gigafactory and AI data centers in Austin; ahead of the company’s introduction of its Robotaxi segment targeted for June in Austin and California later in 2025.
The analysts told investors how the shares pullback is “an attractive entry point” for investors who have greater than a 12-month investment horizon and those who are comfortable with volatility. The firm also noted how there are upcoming “material catalysts” for the stock. These include the introduction of the Robotaxi segment in June, the FSD rollout in China, the FSD rollout in Europe, the introduction of a lower-priced vehicle in the first half of 2025, high volume production of the Optimus Bot in 2026, initial deliveries of Optimus to customers sometime next year as well as the introduction of the Semi Truck.
5. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 223
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) specializes in AI-driven solutions, offering platforms for data centers, self-driving cars, robotics, and cloud services. The company has announced new chips for building and deploying artificial intelligence models at its annual GTC conference on Tuesday, March 18th. The upgrade to Nvidia’s Blackwell chip — dubbed Blackwell Ultra, will be shipped in the second half of this year. Meanwhile, Vera Rubin, the company’s next-generation graphics processing unit, or GPU, is expected to ship in 2026.
“This last year is where almost the entire world got involved. The computational requirement, the scaling law of AI, is more resilient, and in fact, is hyper-accelerated.”
-Jensen Huang.
4. Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 234
Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company wholly owning the internet giant Google, amongst other businesses. One of the most notable analyst calls on Wednesday, March 19, was for Alphabet Inc. Morgan Stanley reiterated the stock as “Overweight,” stating that it’s sticking with the stock following its acquisition of cyber company Wiz. The company recently announced that it’s buying Wiz, a Cloud Security Company, for about $32 billion in its quest to strengthen its position in the cloud-computing race against Amazon.com and Microsoft.
“Post-close, the companies confirmed that Wiz will continue to provide multi-cloud support (AWS, Azure, Oracle, etc.), while also leveraging access to GOOGL’s first-party data and scale to innovate further on its existing solutions.”
3. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 235
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is a global technology company. On March 19, JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth reiterated his “Overweight” rating and $727 price target on the stock. According to the firm, tech giant Meta and streaming company Spotify are its top picks for investors looking to buy the dip. The firm said that the tech giant has established itself as the “leading open source AI platform,” referring to the expected release of Meta’s Llama 4 model and other products that are likely to drive additional revenue.
“Overall, we’re bullish on META’s AI leadership, which we believe warrants heavy capex & infrastructure spend, & we expect greater AI monetization to support revenue trends in 2025. We expect 2025 revenue growth to be driven by core optimizations, AI investments (Advantage+), Andromeda, video unification, Reels, & Click-to-Message.”
2. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 317
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) provides AI-powered cloud, productivity, and business solutions, focusing on efficiency, security, and AI advancements. On March 18, inait, a Swiss AI startup, announced a collaboration with Microsoft. This collaboration aims to accelerate the development and commercialization of inait’s innovative AI technology through its unique digital brain AI platform.
Inait’s brain programming language enables machines to learn from experience and understand cause and effect, providing cognitive abilities for real-world interactions toward adaptive general intelligence. The partnership will center on joint product development, go-to-market strategies, and co-selling initiatives, initially targeting the finance and robotics sectors. In particular, the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and its global reach will be used to accelerate the deployment of inait’s AI solutions.
“We believe that inait’s approach to AI has the potential to bring significant value to the industry. Their neuroscience-inspired technology is truly innovative, and we are pleased to collaborate with them to bring these advancements to market, starting with the fintech and robotics sectors where we see opportunities for immediate transformation.”
-Catrin Hinkel, CEO Microsoft Switzerland.
1. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 339
Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is an American technology company offering e-commerce, cloud computing, and other services, including digital streaming and artificial intelligence solutions. On March 18, Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney maintained a “Buy” rating on the stock with an associated price target that remains the same at $270.00. The analyst quoted several factors that underscore Amazon’s strategic positioning and growth potential in the satellite internet sector.
In particular, Amazon’s Kuiper project is seen as the only realistic competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink in the LEO satellite internet broadband space considering the high barriers to entry. These barriers exist due to limited spectrum availability and the industry’s capital-intensive nature. Satellite internet services like Starlink demonstrate a lucrative market opportunity, which implies that Project Kuiper could become a profitable venture for Amazon. The target market for Kuiper is the expansive $1 trillion terrestrial telecom and broadband sector. This significantly exceeds the $25 billion Sat Com market, justifying Amazon’s investment.
While we acknowledge the potential of AMZN 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 AMZN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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