We recently published a list of 10 AI Stocks to Watch on Latest News and Analyst Ratings. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) stands against other AI stocks to watch on latest news and analyst ratings.

AI discussion boards online are buzzing with a new development where tech experts are pointing to a possible plateauing of performance in artificial intelligence applications.

CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa in a latest program quoted tech investor Ben Horowitz, who said in a recent podcast that he’s not seeing performance improvement despite increasing GPUs.

“We’re increasing GPUs at the same rate, but we’re not getting the intelligence improvements at all out of it.”

OpenAI is reportedly facing similar problems with its upcoming AI model.

“The Information reports that the quality increase in OpenAI’s upcoming advanced model, Orion, is smaller than the jump seen between the last two flagship models, GPT-3 and GPT-4. In other words, generational advancements may have peaked as the models are essentially running out of data to train on,” Bosa said.

While the next jump in AI performance is far away in the future, the possibilities this technology has unlocked based on the existing data and resources are keeping investors and Wall Street analysts busy.

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In this article we take a look at top AI stocks trending on the back of latest news and analyst ratings. With each stock we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. 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).

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 216

Jason Helfstein from Oppenheimer last month said Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) is not a “favored” stock among investors these days because of the regulatory concerns and search threat from ChatGPT. The analyst, who has an Outperform rating on the stock, said both these questions won’t be answered in the short term so Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) will continue to show they are improving.

“They definitely need to continue to show, to your point, that they’re making improvements with AI, that consumers are using AI and that it is not diluted. Then we can debate, what would the impacts be if they had to end their exclusive search relationship with Apple.”

The analyst said the “bar is so low” for Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) that he expected the company to post an earnings beat. And that’s exactly what happened.

The results showed that the market has been ignoring Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s key secondary businesses and the stock remains undervalued despite concerns around AI search and regulatory onslaught.

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s secondary ventures in AI, autonomous driving, and other areas are making solid progress, especially in the Waymo robotaxi segment. Currently, Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s stock trades below 20 times forward earnings, offering potential upside as EPS and other financial metrics strengthen in coming years. For next year, the consensus EPS estimate sits around $9. However, Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has consistently beaten projections, delivering $7.54 in trailing twelve-month EPS compared to the expected $6.79—a roughly 11% outperformance.

With the 2025 EPS forecast at around $9, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) could realistically achieve earnings closer to $10 if it maintains its historical outperformance rate. At a projected $10 EPS, Google’s forward P/E multiple would be approximately 17, a relatively low valuation for a diversified market leader.

What are the key drivers for Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)?

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) remains on track to reach a $100 billion revenue run rate from YouTube Ads and Google Cloud by the end of 2024. In its autonomous driving division, Waymo has shown notable progress, with paid autonomous rides growing 200% quarter-over-quarter to 150,000 weekly rides as of late October, thanks to a fleet of 700 vehicles in service since August.

This growth is significant: Waymo vehicles now average about 30.6 autonomous rides per day—substantially higher than Uber’s average of 4.18 rides per driver daily, based on Uber’s 31 million daily trips and 7.4 million drivers last quarter. This performance underscores Waymo’s competitive edge in autonomous ride volume compared to traditional ride-hailing.

In the third quarter, Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Search & Other segment saw a 12.2% year-over-year revenue increase, rising from $44.03 billion to $49.39 billion. YouTube advertising also performed well, with revenue up 12.2% to $8.92 billion from $7.95 billion. Meanwhile, Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s subscriptions, platforms, and devices revenue grew even more sharply, surging 27.8% from $8.34 billion to $10.66 billion.

Google Cloud has been expanding steadily, with revenue climbing from $13.06 billion in 2020 to $33.09 billion in 2023. Notably, Google Cloud turned profitable for the first time in 2023, posting $1.72 billion in operating profit—a significant improvement from a $5.61 billion loss in 2020. This segment’s performance continues to strengthen, with the latest quarterly revenue reaching $11.35 billion, up 35% from $8.41 billion in the same period last year.

Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund (Hedged) stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in its Q3 2024 investor letter:

“Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) operating performance remains strong with sales growing 14% in the most recent quarter. Highlights included the ongoing secular growth of digital advertising driving Google search (+14%), YouTube’s continued success as a leading content platform (+13%) and the performance of the Cloud business (+29%). In conjunction with this strong sales momentum, Alphabet’s increased focus on expenses is delivering margin expansion such that Operating Income grew 26%.

Despite this operational momentum, Alphabet’s share price declined 11% in the quarter as a federal judge ruled against the company in its case with the US Department of Justice. The case pertains to Google’s monopolisation of both the search and digital advertising markets which is claimed to limit competition and innovation and/or in

Potential remedies include prohibiting exclusive agreements which make Google the default search engine on Apple or Samsung devices, forcing Alphabet to share its advertising technology with rivals, or in the extreme breaking the company apart. The timing and outcomes remain somewhat uncertain however we remain of the belief that at the fundamental level Alphabet’s products are best of breed across several verticals and are  benefitting from secular industry trends and that these factors will be the ultimate determinant of long-term shareholder returns.”

Overall, GOOGL ranks 2nd on our list of AI stocks to watch on latest news and analyst ratings. While we acknowledge the potential of GOOGL, our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar 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 GOOGL 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.