Loop Capital Raises Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) Price Target to $185, Citing Spending Discipline and Stock Buybacks Amid Uncertain Market Conditions

We recently compiled a list of the 11 Trending AI Stocks on Latest News and Ratings. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) stands against the other trending AI stocks.

The extent to which AI tech may disrupt life as we know it in the coming years is still shrouded in mystery. However, multiple organizations have been making an effort to quantize these changes for a better understanding of the evolving business landscape. For example, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a London-based non-profit group, recently released a report detailing that AI may displace between 1 million to 3 million private sector jobs in the United Kingdom alone in the coming years. However, the report also stressed that the ultimate rise in unemployment will be in the low hundreds of thousands as growth in technology also creates new roles. Estimates from the non-profit suggest that at the peak of AI-led disruption, between 60,000 and 275,000 jobs will be displaced every year over a couple of decades.

Read more about these developments by accessing 10 Best AI Data Center Stocks and 10 Buzzing AI Stocks According to Goldman Sachs.

This number was put into larger context by the institute by highlighting that the average number of job losses in the European country over the past decade had been 450,000 a year. The AI-led disruption seems modest compared to these figures, per the report.  The report further underlined that a common lesson was that AI was likely to increase the dynamism of the labor market by prompting more workers to leave existing jobs and start new ones. The institute noted that administrative and secretarial jobs would be the most exposed to the new technology, followed by sales and customer service, and banking and finance. The think tank research further claimed that deployment of AI could raise GDP by up to 1% over the next five years, rising to up to 6% by 2035.

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.

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.

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A laptop and phone open to Google’s services in an everyday setting.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 165

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is a California-based technology company that owns and runs the internet search engine Google. On November 6, Loop Capital raised the price target on the stock to $185 from $170 and kept a Hold rating on the shares. In an investor note, the advisory underlined that it was rolling forward its valuation framework to 2026 targets, also noting that the tech company was doing many things right, especially with spending discipline and increasing stock repurchase through this period of longer-term uncertainty and valuation pressure. The note further added that besides evidence of revenue growth acceleration driven by AI search, which does not seem likely in the near term, the advisory did not see a catalyst for reversal of positive sentiment.

Overall GOOG ranks 6th on our list of the trending AI stocks on latest news and ratings. While we acknowledge the potential of GOOG 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 GOOG 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.