We recently compiled a list of the 35 AI News You Should Not Miss. In this article, we are going to take a look at where KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) stands against the other AI stocks you should not miss.
The AI industry is constantly evolving and investors are keeping a close eye on investments, advancements in AI capabilities, and new partnerships to keep pace with the continued rise of generative AI and integration into key industries. One of the most exciting developments in the field of AI over the past week has been the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded to scientists John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their pioneering work in the field of machine learning. Hopfield, a researcher at Princeton University, gained recognition for developing an associative memory system, a neural network model capable of storing and reconstructing images or other data patterns. His work revolutionized how data patterns can be represented and recalled, marking significant progress in the field of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, Hinton, a professor at the University of Toronto, pioneered a method for autonomously discovering data properties, enabling machines to perform tasks such as identifying specific elements within images. His contributions have been pivotal in advancing AI capacity for image recognition and pattern identification.
Another notable report worthy of mention is a recent Reuters study into the funding that AI startups have attracted so far this year. The study highlights the $6.6 billion funding round for AI startup OpenAI recently that pushed the valuation of the company to more than $157 billion. It also spotlights other AI startups that have received more than $500 million in funding this year. These include xAI, CoreWeave, Scale AI, Figure AI, Groq, Mistral AI, and Cohere. They have raised $6 billion, $1.1 billion, $1 billion, $657 million, $640 million, $600 million, and $500 million in funding so far this year, respectively. The startups are all valued at more than $2.5 billion, with xAI, founded by Tesla chief Elon Musk, worth over $24 billion. A recent report by Goldman Sachs reveals that businesses worldwide are projected to spend nearly $1 trillion in the coming years on building AI infrastructure. The report underscores the massive scale of investment needed to meet the growing demand for AI technologies across various industries. In 2024 alone, venture capital firms have already completed around 200 deals with AI companies, pouring in nearly $22 billion in funding. The average size of these funding rounds exceeds $100 million, reflecting the increasing valuation of AI startups, which now often surpass $1 billion.
Read more about these developments by accessing 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock and Beyond the Tech Giants: 35 Non-Tech AI Opportunities.
Our Methodology
For this article, we selected AI stocks by combing 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).
The inner workings of a semiconductor manufacturing facility, neon hued machines humming with activity.
KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 55
KLA Corporation (NASDAQ:KLAC) markets process control and yield management solutions for the semiconductor industry. Investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald recently penned a research note on the semiconductor space, noting that recent issues from Intel and Samsung were likely to negatively impact the semiconductor equipment market. Analysts at the advisory stressed that orders were bottoming and fundamentals would modestly recover for semi stocks in CY25 with even greater recovery into CY26. Per Cantor, regulatory risks remained, but cyclically the market was at the point where the group was a buy. Shares were likely range-bound into DOC/BIS announcement, but Cantor suspected the sell-off in early September marked a bottom for Semi Cap.
Overall KLAC ranks 26th on our list of the AI stocks you should not miss. While we acknowledge the potential of KLAC 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 KLAC but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: $30 Trillion Opportunity: 15 Best Humanoid Robot Stocks to Buy According to Morgan Stanley and Jim Cramer Says NVIDIA ‘Has Become A Wasteland’.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
