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 Cloudflare Inc. (NYSE:NET) 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).

A close-up of a server array powering a cloud-services system.

Cloudflare Inc. (NYSE:NET)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 44

Cloudflare Inc. (NYSE:NET) is founded on an intelligent and high-speed global network to offer content delivery and wide area network services, cloud cybersecurity and DDoS mitigation features, Domain Name Service, and reverse proxies, among other services. The platform can securely connect workers, networks, and apps through Zero Trust security for a smooth journey to a unified SASE. Furthermore, users can also deploy and build full-stack AI apps using the company’s Workers AI platform, which runs ML workloads via the Cloudflare API while minimizing risks with built-in threat intelligence. Elsewhere, Cloudflare Inc.’s (NYSE:NET) AI Gateway offers total visibility and control over all AI apps on the platform and shows how people are using them to provide insights into how apps can be scaled.

On January 27th, Wells Fargo announced raising Cloudflare Inc.’s (NYSE:NET) target price to $150 from $135. The brokerage retained an “Overweight” stock rating. Wells Fargo analysts highlighted that the company is a “Top Pick” for 2025, adding that company shares have jumped 16% YTD to secure the top performer spot across the entire software industry despite shares now trading at about 16-turns EV/2026 Sales. While highlighting that checks for Q4 were strong, the analysts said that if the company could exit Q4 at a 26% YoY growth rate, they would expect the initial 2025 guidance to be in the 25%-plus YoY range, almost in line with the Wall Street consensus.

Overall NET ranks 5th on our list of the top AI stocks in latest analyst ratings and upgrades. While we acknowledge the potential of NET 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 NET 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.