We recently compiled a list of the 10 Buzzing AI Stocks on Latest News and Ratings. In this article, we are going to take a look at where AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) stands against the other AI stocks.
Artificial intelligence startups are playing a big role in US venture capital funding. As per PitchBook data reported by Reuters, the total capital raised in 2024 was nearly 30% higher year-on-year. AI startups bagged a record 46.4% of the total $209 billion raised in the previous year, compared to less than 10% a decade earlier. This means that venture capitalists put $97 billion into artificial intelligence startups in the US. Artificial intelligence technology has been garnering investor interest recently, a majority of which are very optimistic about the sector.
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“The AI/LLM companies did enjoy a historically rich funding environment. Most raised multiple rounds at exponentially higher valuations last year. They will need to smash very significant business milestones this year to continue enjoying unlimited access to infinity capital”.
-James Cross, managing director at Franklin Venture Partners.
In particular, AI companies like xAI, OpenAI, and Anthropic have led the way in funding. xAI has raised $6 billion in a May funding round and another $6 billion in December to develop its AI chatbot Grok. OpenAI has also raised $6.6 billion in October. Similarly, AI startup Anthropic is in talks to raise as much as $2 billion at a $60 billion valuation, CNBC has confirmed. The funding round is being led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Anthropic, OpenAI, and other tech giants are in a generative AI arms race so that they don’t fall behind in a market that is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.
Many of these funding rounds share a common goal: advancing AI capabilities, with some aiming for the long-term vision of achieving AGI. However, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has said that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has become a sloppy term.
“If you look at our levels, our five levels, you can find people that would call each of those AGI, right? And the hope of the levels is to have some more specific grounding on where we are and kind of like how progress is going, rather than is it AGI, or is it not AGI?”
– Altman said.
Altman also referred to something called the ARC-AGI challenge, referring to it as “a North Star toward AGI”. The new AI model which OpenAI plans to introduce on Jan. 10 passes this challenge.
“They said if you can score 85% on this, we’re going to consider that a ‘pass,’ And our system — with no custom work, just out of the box — got an 87.5%. And we have very promising research and better models to come”.
-Sam Altman.
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.
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).
A close-up of a mobile device, showing an advertiser reaching out to a consumer via a software-based platform.
AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 51
AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) provides a leading marketing platform powered by AI technology. On January 7th, Piper Sandler analyst James Callahan reiterated an “Overweight” rating on AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) with a $400.00 price target. Applovin leverages AI-powered technologies to optimize advertising and enhance user engagement. The company has revamped its AI-powered Axon engine, helping it to enter new verticals like e-commerce. The introduction of Axon 2.0, in particular, has allowed it to improve its real-time ad delivery and targeting capabilities, in turn helping it in serving e-commerce advertisers.
According to Piper Sandler, competitive ad pricing, incremental spend, and the potential for expanding attribution windows are some of the strengths in Applovin’s approach to e-commerce and advertising. Analyzing its e-commerce initiatives, the firm noted a competitive edge in ad pricing in comparison to industry peers as well as an incremental spending pattern by consumers. At the same time, some shortfalls that were noted include room for improving the new E-Commerce product discovery, shorter purchase consideration window than competitors, and older average purchaser age. Regardless of the mixed findings, the firm is optimistic about the e-commerce launch and views opportunities for Applovin to enhance the initial version of its advertising product.
Overall APP ranks 4th on our list of the AI stocks on latest news and ratings. While we acknowledge the potential of APP 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 timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than APP 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.
