We recently published a list of 10 AI Stocks Analysts Are Focusing On These Days. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) stands against other AI stocks analysts are focusing on these days.
Dennis Unkovic, a partner at Meyer, Unkovic & Scott, said in a latest program on CNBC that DeepSeek is the result of President Xi Jinping’s policy of prioritizing AI and tech research over the past few years. The analyst believes DeepSeek is the response of China to American tariffs.
“Today, if you take technology, maybe two-thirds of it is Western and one-third of it is Chinese. It’s clear to me that what the Chinese want to do is move the needle so they’re at least 50/50. What this means…. in the future, is you’re going to have a country that’s going to have to say, what kind of technology do I want to adopt? Is it technology from the West, or is it technology from China? So I think this is a strong opening salvo of the Chinese to the U.S., saying, if you want to put tariffs on me, this is the way we’re going to go.”
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For this article, we picked 10 AI stocks that are trending amid the DeepSeek-triggered selloff that rocked the markets. With each stock, we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. 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).
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 128
Barclays analysts led by Tom O’Malley in a latest report gave bullish comments on Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) and called the stock one of the top semiconductor plays in 2025.
“We see this shift translating to ~$21B flowing to AVGO custom chips in their FY26 and nearly $4B in ASIC in CY26 to MRVL and only expect this to scale to support what we identify as a >$1T TAM by the end of the decade.”
Barclays boosted Broadcom’s price target to $260 from $205.
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) continues to be a leader in the AI ASCI and networking chips market. Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) has 3nm AI ASIC chip deals with Alphabet and Meta in addition to many other tech giants aiming massive spending for AI hyperscaling.
However, the stock could face the impact of what Nvidia is facing today: too high expectations.
In the last reported quarter, Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) revenue was largely in line with estimates. The company has narrowly exceeded revenue expectations by less than 5% in most cases. Some analysts suggest Broadcom’s growth rates will moderate to below 20% CAGR starting the first quarter of 2025. In fiscal Q4, it was +50% topline growth. The market won’t be kind to the stock when the revenue growth rate slows. Broadcom has about $58 billion in net debt, which is relatively high.
Munro Global Growth Fund stated the following regarding Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) contributed 94bps to Fund performance for the quarter. Broadcom is a fabless semiconductor company that designs semiconductors for a range of different industries and applications, based in Palo Alto, California. The company plays an important role in providing semiconductors for AI, specifically, they provide hyperscale data centre companies custom silicon chips. Over time, as companies such as Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft build out their AI offering, the critical semiconductor content will come from both custom silicon chips, designed by companies such as Broadcom, and merchant silicon chips, designed by Nvidia. Depending on the use case, or workload, the hyperscaler will use either a custom silicon semiconductor or a merchant silicon semiconductor. Therefore, over time we expect AI processes to be driven by both Nvidia designed chips and custom designed chips from Broadcom and its peers.
On their recent earnings call, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan confirmed that the company’s customers are rapidly pursuing the development of a 1 million XPU cluster of chips. To translate what this means for Broadcom, Hock laid out the Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) opportunity for the company’s AI revenues over the next 3 years to 2027. In 2024, Hock noted that Broadcom’s SAM was $15-20bn USD, of which the company commanded an approximate 70% share. In 2027, that SAM is expected to grow to $60-90bn USD, and assuming Broadcom captures an approximate 60% share, this gives rise to $50bn USD of AI revenue opportunity for the company over the next 3 years. For the company overall, this means that revenue has the potential to double over the next 3 years. We believe the technology road map outlined by Broadcom and the resulting revenue opportunity gives rise to a multi-year runway of earnings growth backed by a large structural change.”
Overall, AVGO ranks 6th on our list of AI stocks analysts are focusing on these days. While we acknowledge the potential of AVGO, our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar 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 AVGO 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.