Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) Lags in AI Race as DeepSeek Surpasses Llama Model

We recently compiled a list of the 12 High Flying AI Stocks This Week. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stands against the other high flying AI stocks.

In the artificial intelligence world, the spotlight will be shifting to France next week as the world awaits the US and China to find common ground over the safe development of artificial intelligence. Judging by the measured response from China over the tariffs issue, there is a chance it might. That noted, a wide variety of countries are going to be attending an AI Action Summit in Paris next week to discuss how to put the technology to work. France is going to be hosting the summit alongside India on Feb 10 and 11, focusing on areas such as open-source systems and clean energy for powering data centers, Reuters reported.

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Meanwhile, the emergence of DeepSeek is increasingly turning into a game-changing event for AI development in China. The founder, Liang Wenfeng, is being hailed as a national hero. Indeed, his efforts have greatly helped the country to catch up with the US in the race toward AI supremacy. Chinese companies are increasingly rushing to support AI models coming from DeepSeek. Moore Threads and Hygon Information Technology, for instance, said on Monday that their computing clusters and accelerators will be able to support Deep Seek’s R1 and V3 models. Moore Threads, in particular, stated that progress by DeepSeek’s models using domestically made GPUs could set China’s AI industry “on fire”.

While many of the companies in China are rushing to adopt DeepSeek, yet many others are pushing their own AI models forward. Alibaba Cloud released Qwen 2.5-Max just after DeepSeek over the holidays, Beijing-based start-up Zhipu is also in the AI race with its AI assistant app released in October, Chinese start-up Moonshot AI released its own LLM the day DeepSeek released its r1 model, and more. These moves by Chinese companies, and the broader market reaction in the US after the emergence of DeepSeek, reflect on how grave the impact has been on the AI world.

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.

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Is Meta Platforms Inc. (META) the Best FAANG+ Stock to Invest in Right Now?

A team of developers working in unison to create the company’s messaging application.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 235

Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is a global technology company. On February 4th, Piper Sandler’s research reported by Benzinga discovered a less optimistic outlook for the company in the artificial intelligence race. After CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the company is “still digesting” some of the “novel things” Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has done, the firm reflected on insights from a data center engineering expert. The crux of the matter is that Meta is clearly behind its competitors. The Piper Sandler note has revealed that DeepSeek is ahead of Meta’s latest Llama model, but lags behind OpenAI and Anthropic by about six months. The firm further indicates that Meta has substantial ground to make up for in the rapidly changing AI landscape.

“In terms of the tricks and methodology applied by DeepSeek, the leading labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic are fully aware of such methodologies and also employ these but such is not the case of Meta which is clearly behind.”

Overall META ranks 2nd on our list of the high flying AI stocks this week. While we acknowledge the potential of META 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 META 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.