Why Is J.P. Morgan Bullish on Vistra (VST) Despite AI Concerns?

We recently published a list of Weekend Roundup: Top 10 AI Stocks on Latest News and Ratings. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) stands against other AI stocks on latest news and ratings.

Elon Musk has recently been in the news for his vain attempt to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, but that’s not all. It has recently come to light that Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is canvassing potential investors for a roughly $10 billion funding round. This could value the company at an estimated $75 billion.

According to media reports, existing investors, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Valor Equity Partners, are in discussions to participate in the transaction. However, the terms of the round aren’t finalized yet and may change.

READ ALSO: 10 AI Stocks Analysts Are Watching: Latest Ratings and News and Top 14 AI Stocks on Wall Street: News and Analyst Ratings

According to data compiled by PitchBook, xAI was last valued at $51 billion. The startup was launched by Musk in 2023, a rival to OpenAI. xAI has recently revealed that Grok3, its AI chatbot, is in the final stages of development and will be released in a week or two.

“Grok 3 has very powerful reasoning capabilities, so in the tests that we’ve done thus far, Grok 3 is outperforming anything that’s been released, that we’re aware of, so that’s a good sign”.

-Elon Musk

With the competition in the AI world heating up fast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has recently revealed its plans around GPT-5, and how the company is going to work on simplifying its offerings. He stated that he realizes how the company’s models and product offerings are getting complicated, bringing a solution for user ease.

“We hate the model picker as much as you do and want to return to magic unified intelligence”.

-Sam Altman.

Currently, users are required to manually select various AI models for different tasks. According to Altman, GPT-4.5, internally known as Orion, will be the company’s final “non-chain-of-thought model.” After its release, the company will unify o-series and GPT-series models.

It will do so by offering a system that can use all of its features and determine when to take more or less time to think. The GPT-5 model will be launched as a comprehensive AI system that will incorporate o3 along with other technologies.

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.

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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Vistra Corp. (VST): An Integrated Retail Electricity and Power Generation Company

Solar panel workers installing a new farm for clean energy generation.

Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 97  

Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) operates as an integrated retail electricity and power generation company. On February 11, Jeremy Tonet from J.P. Morgan maintained a “Buy” rating on the stock with a price target of $203.00.

Vistra (NYSE:VST) has positioned itself well to capitalize on the growing energy needs of AI data centers. Several analysts have been bullish on the stock. Morgan Stanley has listed the stock as one of its “high conviction” picks for 2025. The firm raised its price target from $135 to $169 in November 2024 largely due to its growth opportunities driven by AI-powered energy demand and data center expansion. The stock plunged after the emergence of DeepSeek stemming from concerns that more efficient AI models meant reduced electricity usage, partially recovering since.

Overall, VST ranks 7th on our list of AI stocks on latest news and ratings. While we acknowledge the potential of VST 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 VST but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.