We recently compiled a list of the Top 10 Unlikely AI Stocks with Tremendous Upside Potential. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) stands against the other AI stocks.
Artificial intelligence was the main force that drove the US stock market to record highs last year. While major indices have since pulled back, the big question is whether the AI trade is fully priced in. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we are still in the early stages of AI development and revolution.
Tech giants pumping billions of dollars into data centres, building AI platforms and investing in startups affirm that AI growth is all but starting. According to former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, we are still in the early stages of the AI revolution, and significant changes are on the horizon.
“We’re in the beginnings of this generative AI revolution as we all know. And we’re at the beginning of a new generation of foundation models that are able to do reasoning and able to do long thinking,” Sutskever said.
After years of building the foundation to support the AI revolution, generative AI is entering a new phase of advanced foundation models that should take AI reasoning and thinking to new heights. Likewise, Sutskever insists we are on the cusp of super-intelligent, self-aware AI capable of reasoning like humans as tech giants work on game-changing innovations.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shares similar sentiments, who insists there is about $1 trillion worth of computers that need updating for accelerated computing. Consequently, AI is looked upon to bring about much-needed changes by improving business efficiency and developing game-changing products. This implies that there is plenty of room for AI-driven revenue growth that should benefit many companies.
Amid the stock run-up experienced in 2024, investment professionals are also optimistic that the trend will persist in 2025. Companies should start reaping the rewards of adopting generative AI as others start generating some returns from their AI investments.
Similarly, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives expects a 25% rise in tech stocks in 2025, keeping up with the momentum enjoyed last year. While most of the gains will be driven by reduced regulatory pressure under President Donald Trump’s administration, a more AI-friendly environment will also significantly impact the upward momentum.
“We believe tech stocks will be robust in 2025 on the shoulders of the AI Revolution and $2 trillion+ of incremental AI cap-ex over the next 3 years,” analysts led by Daniel Ives said in a note.
Some cracks are starting to emerge amid the expected growth around artificial intelligence. Although generative AI has advanced rapidly over the last two years, Silicon Valley has grown increasingly concerned in recent weeks that the pace of advancement is slowing. The lack of advancement between models published by the industry’s major players is one early sign. The primary issue might be that AI firms are running out of data on which to train their models.
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).
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Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 71
Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) operates an observability and security platform for cloud applications. Its products comprise infrastructure and application performance monitoring, log management and digital experience monitoring. On January 8th, research analysts at Scotiabank reiterated an outperform rating on the stock with a $133 price target.
The upgrade comes amid growing optimism of another good year for the software sector, which is expected to benefit from multiple catalysts, including artificial intelligence. It also comes on Datadog, Inc. (NASDAQ:DDOG) being named a leader in observability and digital experience monitoring software by consulting firm Gartner. As cloud migration and digital transformation increase the complexity of computing environments, spending in that market is expected to grow at a rate of 12% per year through 2027.
The company is launching new products to satisfy demand, and artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, should be a significant tailwind. LLM Observability, a software module that enables developers to keep an eye on generative AI applications and the large language models (LLMs) that underpin them, was unveiled by Datadog last year.
Overall DDOG ranks 3rd on our list of the unlikely AI stocks with tremendous upside potential. While we acknowledge the potential of DDOG as an investment, 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 DDOG but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 8 Best Wide Moat Stocks to Buy Now and 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.
