Last week, Sam Altman, CEO of AI company OpenAI, expressed his confidence that US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will support the artificial intelligence sector, ensuring the United States and its allies continue their lead. Altman told US broadcaster Fox News that AI technology needed massive infrastructure support and that Trump would be ideal in providing it.
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“We need to build that here and we need to be able to have the best AI infrastructure in the world to be able to lead with the technology and the capabilities. I believe President-elect Trump will be very good at that”.
-Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO
Trump has already picked out Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Sacks as his AI and Crypto czar, stating that Sacks will ensure the legal framework for the token has “clarity” to empower the crypto industry to “thrive”. Trump’s decision to appoint Sacks demonstrates his industry-friendly stance toward emerging technologies.
“David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas. He will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship”.
-Trump said in a post on his social network, Truth Social.
Meanwhile, SpaceX founder Elon Musk emerged as a key advisor to Trump after the elections. Musk has also been appointed to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is responsible for streamlining government bureaucracy.
Musk having a potential political influence in the administration, particularly when it comes to AI, could get some people worried. However, prominent figures such as Sam Altman say they aren’t. Altman brushed off suggestions that Musk, the owner of X, would use legal tactics to shut down competitors. Matt Calkins, CEO of Appian, is also confident about Musk’s influence on the Trump administration, stating how the influence is positive because Musk “deeply” knows artificial intelligence.
The growing momentum of AI, underscored by recent government developments, has brought attention to other key players in the sector, including Anthropic, a leading AI-focused company. Anthropic is collaborating with Amazon to develop one of the world’s most powerful AI supercomputers. The mega-project, codenamed “Project Rainer,” will be five times larger than the cluster used to build Anthropic’s current most advanced model. As reported by WIRED, the announcement was made at the company’s Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas by Matt Garman, CEO of AWS. Once it is completed, the supercomputer will be the world’s largest AI machine featuring hundreds of thousands of its latest Trainium 2 AI training chips.
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10. Asana, Inc. (NYSE:ASAN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 18
Asana, Inc. (NYSE:ASAN) is a leading enterprise work management platform, having announced significant demand for its AI Studio, a no-code builder enabling teams to design workflows with the help of AI agents. On December 6, Jefferies analyst Brent Thill maintained Asana with a “Hold” and raised the price target from $13 to $16. Following its earnings, the analyst said that there are signs of stabilization, along with an “encouraging early response” to the AI Studio. Nevertheless, the firm said that the macro environment remains a headwind and that Asana continues to lose share to Monday.com and Smartsheet. It will take some time for the AI Studio to “move the needle”.
9. Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 19
Verint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNT) is a CX (customer experience) Automation Company™ leveraging the Verint Open Platform and its team of AI-powered bots for delivering tangible AI business outcomes. On December 4th, the company announced the introduction of its latest AI-assisted “scoring bot” running in the Verint Open Platform, a cloud-based AI-driven contact center platform for increasing customer experience (CX) automation. The scoring bot uses unique and proprietary AI models to offer insight into customer experience, agent satisfaction, and the emotional connection between customers and agents. By allotting a score for both customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) for every call, contact center teams can enhance agent interactions and customer satisfaction.
“You can’t improve what you don’t measure. The Verint CX/EX Scoring Bot delivers a unique approach to measuring the human experience. These richer CX and EX insights provide the accurate and timely data needed to deliver strong AI business outcomes driven by elevated customer satisfaction, reduced customer churn and increased efficiency in the contact center.”
– Josh Feast, Verint’s general manager, AI-powered Real-time Coaching.