We recently published an article titled Why These 15 AI Stocks Are Skyrocketing So Far In 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Agora Inc (NASDAQ:API) stands against the other AI stocks.
AI stocks were hit hard by DeepSeek’s announcement, but it seems to be that DeepSeek is only causing more optimism in the long run for many AI companies. This is because cost has been a big problem for AI companies, and if they can make progress on this front, it will let AI companies make much more powerful models with the existing hardware they have.
DeepSeek is open source, so most AI companies can learn from its efficiency and integrate it. Moreover, companies and VCs are still willing to put money into AI companies and are doubling down on their bets. This likely means that AI companies will be able to make even more progress in the long run.
The real action has been spreading into many AI companies beyond the familiar names. Plus, we’re seeing the rise of agentic AI. These stocks crushed the market last year, and despite the DeepSeek catalyst this year, they are still doing well.
Methodology
For this article, I screened the top-performing AI stocks year-to-date. Stocks that I have covered recently will be excluded from this list.
I will also mention the number of hedge fund investors in these stocks. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds invest in? 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).
Agora Inc (NASDAQ:API)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q3 2024: 7
Agora Inc (NASDAQ:API) is a tech company that lets developers integrate real-time voice, video, and AI functions into their apps.
The stock has risen sharply in 2025 due to senior management committing to a voluntary lock-up agreement until the end of 2025. Moreover, although Agora has seen a revenue decline in previous quarters, it has been recovering by focusing on higher-margin products. It expects revenue growth for Q4 2024 and GAAP breakeven this year.
Agora Inc. partnered with OpenAI to launch a conversational AI SDK, so that also improved market sentiment.
For Q3 2024, Agora reported $31.6 million in revenue, down 9.8% year-over-year due to the discontinuation of low-margin products and reduced demand in some sectors. But excluding these, revenue increased 2.3% sequentially. It also had $362.6 million in cash at the end of Q3 2024.
Agora projects Q4 2024 revenue between $34 million and $36 million.
The consensus price target of $6 implies -0.8% downside.
API stock is up 38.4% year-to-date.
Overall API ranks 14th on our list of the AI stocks that are skyrocketing so far in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of API 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 API 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.