The landscape of top artificial intelligence stocks has shifted in 2025 with investors focused on new plays such as $CoreWeave, Inc.(CRWV)$ . While semiconductor stocks once ruled as the best AI stocks, more software companies are emerging, with $Snowflake(SNOW)$ up 37% this year.
To be sure, top AI stocks such as $Microsoft(MSFT)$ and $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ face high expectations. For many companies — such as Google parent $Alphabet(GOOGL)$ , $Amazon.com(AMZN)$ and Facebook parent $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ — the rise of generative AI poses both risk and opportunity.
Many companies suddenly tout AI product roadmaps. In general, look for AI stocks that use artificial intelligence to improve products or gain a strategic edge.
AI Stocks: Agent Battle Intensifies
"All leading AI tech companies — including Google, Meta, OpenAI — are in an intense competition to be the starting point 'Agent' to help consumers navigate their lives," said Bank of America analyst Justin Post in a report. "AI agents will change how users interact with ad platforms by replacing keyword queries and clicks with natural language interactions and goal-oriented conversations."
Having struggled to generate new revenue from "copilots," software companies are now turning to autonomous, goal-driven AI agents.
While software companies have been slow to monetize AI products, some analysts still expect long-term gains.
"The next (and arguably first) phase of AI-driven productivity gains in the enterprise will likely hinge on the efficacy of agents at the software application layer over the next three years," said Goldman Sachs analyst Gabriella Borges in a report. "In 2030, we estimate the agent portion of the software total addressable market will be over 60% of the total."
AI Stocks: Nvidia Targets Sovereign Market
A bellwether for AI stocks, chip maker Nvidia has advanced 7% in 2025 after being down nearly 20%. Nvidia aims to broaden its customer base beyond big tech through "sovereign AI," partnerships with governments.
For example, Nvidia will supply AI accelerators to Saudi Arabia's Humain, which is building 500-megawatt AI data center. Humain is a new AI subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. And, Nvidia is targeting European countries as well.
Nvidia reported first quarter earnings on May 28. The AI accelerator maker beat Wall Street's sales and earnings targets for the quarter ended April 27, even with the loss of China business from U.S. trade restrictions.
For Nvidia stock, margin pressure has been a key issue as it ramps up production of next-generation Blackwell AI chips in 2025. At GTC, Nvidia updated its AI accelerator roadmap. However, whether customers will really need "Rubin Ultra" GPUs in 2027 and "Feynman" GPUs in 2028 remains a big question.
Meta's Big Bet On Scale AI
Meanwhile, Meta stock has gained 16% in 2025.
Meta continues to overhaul its AI strategy. Meta plans to invest $14.9 billion in Scale AI for a 49% stake in the startup. Scale AI provides data labeling services that help train and produce AI large language models. Scale AI Chief Executive Alexandr Wang will join a new AI research lab at Meta dedicated to pursuing "superintelligence."
On Meta's Q1 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out five pillars of expected AI growth. They include improved advertising, engaging social media experiences, business messaging, the Meta AI app, and AI devices, including spatial computing.
The social networking giant in April launched the Meta AI app, built with its Llama 4 training model, with chatbot and web-searching features. Previously, Llama had been embedded in Meta applications such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta in April released its open source Llama 4 AI model family. But Meta has delayed the roll out of its powerful Llama model, Llama 4 Behemoth.
CoreWeave, Palantir Stand Out
Shares in Nvidia-backed CoreWeave, which in March launched an initial public offering, have surged 347% in 2025. Investors should keep an eye on the IPO lock-up, which expires Sept. 24, which could mean more trading volatility. CoreWeave reported earnings for the first time as a public company on May 14.
The company forecast higher-than-expected capital spending as it ramps up capacity for more customers. CoreWeave is a new AI cloud services provider that rents out Nvidia GPU-equipped servers. Here's a look at how Nvidia, with a 7% stake in CoreWeave, is key to its future.
Both Nvidia and CoreWeave remain on the IBD Leaderboard.
What's more, data analytics software maker Palantir reported first quarter earnings on May 5. Palantir stock has gained 81% in 2025 after soaring 340% last year.
Enterprise Data Key To AI Models
One big issue for software companies is how fast customers ramp up pilot programs to commercial deployment.
Palantir — as well as Snowflake and privately held Databricks — are focused on helping companies clean up and organize proprietary data to build their own AI models. Here's a look at Databrick's strategy.
Both Snowflake and Databricks continue to make acquisitions as they try to get an upper hand. Databricks has not discussed plans for an initial public offering.
In an IBD interview, $ServiceNow(NOW)$ Chief executive Bill McDermott explained about how the enterprise software maker aims to be an AI winner. ServiceNow recently set new AI revenue targets for fiscal 2026.
Meanwhile, software maker $Salesforce.com(CRM)$ has agreed to buy Informatica (INFA) for $8 billion to boost its AI strategy. Salesforce stock has declined 22% this year.
Apple Stock Lags, Google I/O
Apple stock has lagged in 2025, falling 20%. Further, Apple hosted its flagship Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9. There were no major surprises on its AI efforts.
With iPhone 17 models expected to debut in September 2025, Apple Intelligence features will likely not be much improved. Voice assistant Siri has yet to be upgraded with advanced AI technology.
Amid worries over AI competition, Google stock is down 12% in 2025. But Q1 earnings provided some upbeat news for Google stock on the AI front. Google recently released the Gemini 2.5 AI model, which has been getting good reviews.
The new Gemini 2.5 family of models underpinned most of the Google I/O product updates. The Gemini app now has 400 million monthly active users, Google said.
AI Stocks: Cloud Computing
Meanwhile, revenue growth at cloud computing giants has been a big theme. That's because capital spending on AI infrastructure has boomed at the cloud giants. Google's cloud unit reported revenue growth of 28% on April 24, in-line with estimates.
But Microsoft crushed Wall Street's fiscal third quarter targets amid strong sales of cloud computing and artificial intelligence services. Azure cloud revenue growth accelerated to 35% in constant currency, up from 31% in the prior quarter. Microsoft stock has advanced 13% in 2025.
Microsoft is the biggest investor in generative AI leader OpenAI, having spent some $14 billion on the startup. It cloud business benefits from handling OpenAI's ChatGPT services.
Meanwhile, Amazon's cloud revenue growth decelerated to 17% from 19% in the prior quarter. Amazon stock has retreated 4% in 2025.
Among AI stocks to watch, $Oracle(ORCL)$ popped on its fiscal fourth quarter financial results and guidance. Oracle stock has surged 23% in 2025.
Among data center infrastructure plays, Arista Networks (ANET) reported earnings on May 6. Arista stock has retreated 22% this year. Here's an interview with Arista Chief Executive Jayshree Ullal on its AI strategy.
AI Stocks: Semiconductor Plays
Meanwhile, AI chip export restrictions remain a wild card on semiconductor companies. The Trump Administrations continues to review its options on China.
$Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)$ hosted its Advancing AI event in mid-June. AMD updated its AI strategy. OpenAI, Oracle, Meta and xAI are among AMD's customers with new speculation involving Amazon Web Services.
$Broadcom(AVGO)$ currently is supplying custom AI chips for Google, Meta and TikTok owner ByteDance. It has four other prospective customers, with Apple, OpenAI and xAI among them, according to analysts. Broadcom's fiscal Q2 earnings came in better-than-expected, with its AI business a bright spot.
$Qualcomm(QCOM)$ , $ARM Holdings(ARM)$ , and $Marvell Technology(MRVL)$ are other AI chip makers to watch.
DeepSeek Roils AI Stocks
Meanwhile, OpenAI was valued at $300 billion as part of a new $40 billion fundraising round led by SoftBank. OpenAI builds large, multimodal foundation models.
Investors should keep a close watch on the fierce competition in AI models. Generally, the AI models are battling in reasoning and multimodal capabilities as well as computing needs. Large language models provide the building blocks to develop applications.
Anthropic's latest funding round values it at $61.5 billion.
China-based DeepSeek is readying the next version of its open-source models.
Here's IBD's take on the key questions involving DeepSeek, including U.S./China competition in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, $Alibaba(BABA)$ has its Qwen AI models and Baidu (BIDU) has Ernie AI models.
The commoditization of AI models could spur application development. While "training" AI models has been the biggest driver of capital spending, the market will shift to "inferencing," or running AI applications, in the long run.
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