January 27, 2025
We recently compiled a list of the Top 10 AI Stocks News: Latest Analyst Ratings And Upgrades . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) stands against the other AI stocks.
On January 27th, US and European tech stocks witnessed a $1 trillion sell-off, with most of the “magnificent seven” stocks trading in red as China’s new DeepSeek AI model rattled investors. The AI model was supposedly built for less than $6 million, which is a stark contrast to the billions spent by rivals. The DeepSeek app, launched late last week, has become the top-rated free app on the Apple App Store in the US and the UK.
As investors question America’s dominance in AI, the sector continues to drive innovation and rapidly achieve milestones across diverse industries. The Global Artificial Intelligence Industry Forecast revealed that the global AI market was worth almost $62.35 billion in 2020 and will grow at a 40% CAGR between 2021 and 2026. Most importantly, AI is helping the world achieve the net-zero emissions goal, playing a key role in the global energy transition through greater operational efficiency.
“Academia needs to be a player here, as a neutral ground to recognize some of these issues and develop systems in a different way,” said Stanford HAI Vice Director James Landay during the 2025 WEF in Davos. “Academia is also an interdisciplinary player—we have experts in law, medicine, history, social sciences, computer science, art, and design, coming together to ask questions, rather than tech companies focused primarily on a profit motive. We need academia and non-government organizations to have a say and play in this game and question this power dynamic.”
This article focuses on the latest stock ratings and analyst calls on AI companies involved in digital advertising, drone technology, and cloud providers to cybersecurity, telecom, defense, and energy generation.
We selected AI stocks by reviewing news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment taken from Insider Monkey’s database of 900 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 ).
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Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) is a global telecommunications leader that offers wireless and wireline communication products and services like corporate networking services, data center and cloud services, broadband services, security and management network solutions, as well as local and long-distance voice services. The company strives to build its AI ecosystem via multiple partnerships and product launches. The company recently launched Verizon AI Connect for hyperscalers, cloud providers, and global enterprises to deploy AI resource-intensive workloads at scale. Earlier, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) also announced a partnership with Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) to transform the integration of GPU-based edge platforms with the telco’s 5G private networks.
However, Bernstein marginally trimmed Verizon Communications Inc.’s (NYSE:VZ) price target to $46 from $48 on January 27th while retaining a “Market Perform” stock rating. The brokerage wrote that the telco ended 2024 with robust postpaid and FWA net adds growth, driven by a strong Q4 as the management guides to a more solid 2025.
Overall VZ ranks 2nd on our list of the top AI stocks in latest analyst ratings and upgrades. While we acknowledge the potential of VZ as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than VZ but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock .
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stock To Buy Now and Complete List of All AI Companies Under $2 Billion Market Cap .
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey .
