We recently compiled a list of the 10 High Flying AI Stocks This Week. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) stands against the other AI stocks.
Celestial AI™, creator of the Photonic Fabric™ optical interconnect technology platform, recently announced that it has raised an additional $250 million in venture capital, bringing its total raised to date to $515 million. The AI startup is working hard to crack a key speed constraint in artificial intelligence. Recently, it has tapped photonics, a technology that uses light in order to create speedy links between AI computing chips and memory chips.
The Series C1 funding round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, with new investors including funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Maverick Silicon, Tiger Global Management and Lip-Bu Tan, as well as participation from existing investors including AMD Ventures, and Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), to name a few.
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The photonic-based technology Celestial AI uses improves memory bandwidth, a key factor in AI performance. Currently, Nvidia reigns supreme in memory bandwidth due to its proprietary technologies called NVLink and NVSwitch. However, Celestial AI, like several other chip firms, is striving to come up with alternatives.
Celestial AI is developing a technology that can sit like a bridge between two or more chips, leveraging a different kind of photonics technology than its competitors. According to Celestial AI CEO Dave Lazovsky, the goal of this “photonic fabric, is to offer speed while saving space and power.
“There are no good answers right outside of Nvidia. What we had created with the photonic fabric does the same thing, but at a different level of energy efficiency and of latency.”
– Celestial AI CEO Dave Lazovsky
The Photonic Fabric technology by Celestial AI is fully compatible with industry standard manufacturing and 2.5D packaging processes. Through this funding, the company will be able to expand and qualify its volume manufacturing supply-chain to serve customer demand.
“Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric is fundamentally transforming AI computing, networking and memory solutions by addressing critical infrastructure challenges with unmatched performance and energy efficiency. I have witnessed the innovative potential of their technology to unlock new capabilities and as a member of the Board of Directors, am proud to be on the Celestial AI team as they commercialize their ground-breaking Photonic Fabric platform.”
-Diane Bryant, Independent Director at Celestial AI and Broadcom Inc.
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. The hedge fund data is as of Q4 2024.
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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A development team working together to create the next version of Windows.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 317
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) provides AI-powered cloud, productivity, and business solutions, focusing on efficiency, security, and AI advancements. On March 10, UBS analyst Karl Kierstead reiterated a “Buy” rating on the stock with a $510.00 price target. The analyst, highlighting Microsoft’s recent performance dip, attributed it to a slowdown in Azure growth without AI. Even though the company has cited go-to-market (GTM) changes planned for mid-2024 as a factor, the lack of clarity around the root cause and resolution timeframe is impacting investor sentiment.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) sustains strong fundamentals despite these concerns. The analyst and his team also reached out to Microsoft channel partners to assess Azure sales deceleration in the second quarter of December, with feedback suggesting that the GTM adjustments around licensing, channel incentives, and account management may have been responsible. Regardless, the firm believes that Azure’s medium-term prospects remain strong.
Overall MSFT ranks 1st on our list of the high flying AI stocks this week. While we acknowledge the potential of MSFT 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 time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MSFT 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.
