We recently published a list of Top 10 Trending AI Stocks to Watch. Since Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) ranks 7th on the list, it deserves a deeper look.
Wall Street continues to gain momentum amid the latest earnings season and analysts are wondering whether we are still up for soft landing. Mohamed El-Erian, Allianz chief economic advisor, talked about the possibility of a soft landing vs no landing during a program on CNBC. When asked what would it take for the market to have a no-landing scenario, the analyst said:
“I think we need the productivity enhancers from A.I., from life sciences to come earlier, we need to continue to have positive shocks to our labor force. And if we get those two things, you can get the bigger but not hotter economy which actually would be perfect for almost everything you can think of, from households to companies to financial markets.”
The analyst does not rule out the possibility of a recession, however.
“My probability of a soft landing is 55%, and a recession is 30%. A soft landing is the most likely scenario, but it’s not dominant. Why isn’t it dominant? Because we have weakness in the household sector, particularly on the lower-income side, and the Fed has been unpredictable. Just think, Morgan—at the end of July, the Fed didn’t cut rates because everything seemed fine. By the next meeting in mid-September, it cut 50 basis points. And now it’s talking about cautious cuts. So, the Fed needs to be careful.”
For this article we picked 10 trending AI stocks based on latest news. With each company we have mentioned its hedge fund sentiment. 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).
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Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 65
Citi Research predicts that capital expenditures for data centers among the leading four cloud companies will surge by 40% year over year, offering a boost to data center interconnect (DCI) providers. Citi anticipates top tech companies will ramp up their data center investments by 40% to 50% in 2025.
Citi analysts, led by Atif Malik, noted in an investor report that “we estimate that the AI networking opportunity is expanding beyond the server connection within a data center to AI platforms connecting multiple data centers through DCI.”
The main beneficiaries of this growth are expected to be DCI providers like Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET).
Malik emphasized the challenges of containing AI model clusters within a single data center as their size approaches 300,000 GPUs by 2025, stating that “containing models in one data center unit will not be sustainable in the long term amid constraints related to power, regulations, among others.” Consequently, hyperscalers are increasingly adopting and planning to expand the use of a multi-data center training approach.
Citi highlighted that Google has utilized this multi-data center strategy for training its Gemini 1 Ultra, and that OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic are also embracing this model. As a result of increased DCI spending, Citi projects that Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET)’s revenue could grow by up to 25% year over year in 2025, primarily driven by Ethernet switching in AI networks.
Citi has raised its price target for Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) to $460 from $385 while maintaining a Buy rating on the stock.
The Information recently reported that Meta Platforms is preparing a cluster of over 100,000 NVIDIA H-100 GPUs to train the latest version of its Llama language model. Evercore ISI believes Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) is likely to be the networking partner for Meta Platforms’ cluster. Ethernet will handle the networking for the project, as InfiniBand isn’t capable of supporting a cluster of this scale, leading Evercore to believe Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) will supply some of the infrastructure.
“Assuming GPU’s represent 80% of total spend on this AI cluster, this would imply total cost of around $2.5B, of which 10% is likely spent on infrastructure,” said Evercore analyst Amit Daryanani, in a note. “This could represent a $250M revenue opportunity for Arista, if they won the business.”
Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) has previously worked with Meta, providing switches for a cluster with 24,000 GPUs. Daryanani noted that their strong relationship makes it likely Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) will supply the switches for this new cluster. If successful, this could boost Arista’s $750 million AI revenue target for 2025. Evercore maintains an Outperform rating on Arista with a $400 price target.
What makes Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) a promising AI stock?
Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) is set to gain amid the AI-driven shift to high-speed networks due to its open Ethernet design and unified Arista EOS. The company’s partnership with Broadcom also created an opportunity for Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) to expand its integrated software and hardware solutions.
Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) claims its Ethernet architecture based on merchant silicon allows fast deployment for major hyperscalers and Tier-2 cloud providers.
Madison Mid Cap Fund stated the following regarding Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) in its Q2 2024 investor letter:
“We trimmed our positions in Arista Networks, Inc. (NYSE:ANET) and Carlisle Companies. Both of these companies have witnessed strong multi-year growth in their stock prices, which have resulted in elevated valuations. While we remain confident in the long-term prospects of both of these businesses, we trimmed our holdings to more appropriate position sizes given the risk/reward offered.”
Overall, Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET) ranks 7th on Insider Monkey’s list titled Top 10 Trending AI Stocks to Watch. While we acknowledge the potential of Arista Networks Inc (NYSE:ANET), our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ANET 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.