Bernstein Reaffirms Outperform Rating for Broadcom Inc. (AVGO), Downplays DeepSeek’s Impact on AI Semiconductor Leaders

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We recently compiled a list of the Top 10 AI Stocks Dominating Wall Street . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) stands against the other AI stocks.

The artificial intelligence community is raving over a new reasoning model that has surprised even Silicon Valley. Developed by Chinese start-up DeepSeek, the r1 claims to match and even exceed OpenAI’s o1 by multiple benchmarks, and that too, at a fraction of the cost. A Chinese hedge-fund manager, Liang Wenfeng, has led the development of r1. Wenfeng has become the leading figure in the country’s AI initiative.

“Deepseek R1 is one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen”.

While some specialists are saying that DeepSeek’s technology is a bit behind OpenAI and Google, it is still an achievement considering it has used fewer and less advanced chips. The country has also had to deal with US restrictions along the way, implying how DeepSeek either found a way around the rules or the controls weren’t stringent enough in the first place.

READ NOW: 10 AI Stocks Making Waves on Wall Street and 11 AI Stocks That Should Be On Your Watchlist

Also developed by DeepSeek is its AI assistant, an artificial intelligence application that was released on January 10. The AI assistant is powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model and boasts over 600 billion parameters. It is designed to assist users by offering them seamless interactions, answering user questions, and enhancing daily tasks.

In the latest news, Reuters reports how the Chinese startup DeepSeek's AI Assistant has overtaken rival ChatGPT to become the top-rated free application available on Apple's App Store in the United States. According to its creators, the AI assistant "tops the leaderboard among open-source models and rivals the most advanced closed-source models globally”.

Both the r1 and AI assistant by DeepSeek are proof that China is getting closer to the US in the race toward supremacy in AI. While several Chinese tech companies have released tech companies over the past, DeepSeek has been particularly praised by the US tech industry for its innovation and achievements.

At the same time, there is skepticism regarding how these cheaper alternatives may question the pricing power of US tech giants and if their spending needs need to be re-evaluated.

“While it remains to be seen if DeepSeek will prove to be a viable, cheaper alternative in the long term, initial worries are centered on whether US tech giants’ pricing power is being threatened and if their massive AI spending needs re-evaluation”.

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.

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Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO )

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 128

Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) is a technology company uniquely positioned in the AI revolution owing to its custom chip offerings and networking assets. On January 27, Bernstein kept an “Outperform” rating with a $220 price target on the stock. Regardless of DeepSeek intimidating Silicon Valley, the firm “continues to like” names such as Broadcom and Nvidia within U.S. Semiconductors. According to the firm, DeepSeek’s entry isn’t going to be a “doomsday” situation for AI buildouts playing out in the Twitterverse. The $5 billion figure that is being quoted was needed to develop DeepSeek’s AI assistant doesn’t reflect everything. The firm contended that the figure does not include all the other costs associated with previous research and experiments on architectures, algorithms, or data. Even if DeepSeek managed to cut these costs, as much as by 10 times, the current model cost trajectories’ increasing by about that much every year anyway “can’t continue forever”. As such, innovations like DeepSeek’s are positive if AI is to continue progressing.

Overall AVGO ranks 3rd on our list of the top AI stocks that are dominating Wall Street. While we acknowledge the potential of AVGO 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 timeframe. 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 .

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 .

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