We recently published a list of 10 Best Performing Growth Stocks in 2025 In this article, we are going to take a look at where GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) stands against other best performing growth stocks in 2025.

Heavy AI investments and the tariffs uncertainty have been putting pressure on the technology and growth sector. While some analysts are giving caution to stay away from growth and tech stocks Doug Clinton, Intelligent Alpha founder and CEO remains bullish on tech and growth stocks. He joined CNBC on February 12 for an interview. He noted that moving past the DeepSeek incident the sector has stabilized and he remains bullish on the tech sector. Some of the positive news for the sector as highlighted by Clinton includes hyper-scalers showing earnings growth, moreover, CEOs from the AI industry have indicated that the capital expenditure boom will continue.

READ ALSO: 10 Oversold Financial Stocks To Buy Right Now and 10 Best Australian Stocks to Buy According to Billionaires.

Clinton further explained that there are levels within the hyperscalers as well in terms of how levered they are to the artificial industry. Companies that have leveraged themselves using artificial intelligence have been experiencing significant growth through developing open-source AI models and by using these technologies to improve their businesses. While answering if tech companies are immune to tariffs, Clinton noted that investors don’t need to have “fire alarms” when it comes to technology companies, mainly hyper-scalers, as these companies are less likely to be overly impacted by the tariffs. This is because these companies are not subject to the import and export issue, which is the main concern regarding tariffs. Clinton explained that he is more interested in the story of technology and growth stocks. Moreover, he is also interested in the developments these tech companies are making with regard to developing their AI products and how the customers are adopting these technologies.

Moreover, while catering to the question regarding the likelihood of a trade war with Canada, Mexico, and China, Clinton noted that a trade war is highly unlikely as the current scenario points more toward negotiations. Clinton thinks that the Trump administration is acting as tough negotiators to get some action and the policies will ease down without a trade war.

While talking about the next big theme within the technology sector, Clinton thinks that silicon chips are going to remain a prominent theme for 2025, as it is being used to deliver AI products to customers. Moreover, he also mentioned that an emerging sub-theme is the use of custom silicon, which are optimized chips tailored for specific tasks, offering optimized performance and energy efficiency compared to general-purpose processors.

Our Methodology

To curate the list of 10 best-performing growth stocks in 2025 we used the Finviz stock screener. Using the screener we aggregated a list of growth stocks that have risen more than 30% on a year-to-date basis, sorted by market cap. Next, we ranked these stocks based on the number of hedge fund holders sourced from Insider Monkey’s Q4 2024 database. Please note that the data was recorded on March 11, 2025.

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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

A top level executive looking out of a skyscraper window, symbolizing the strategic decisions taken by the company.

GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS)

YTD-Performance: 57.08%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 32

GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) develops and operates high-performance data centers in China, offering colocation, managed hosting, and managed cloud services. The company is carrier and cloud-neutral, allowing customers access to major telecommunications networks and public clouds within China. Its services include colocation services, managed services, and data center services.

On February 21, Raymond James analyst Frank Louthan raised the price target on the stock from $25 to $53, while maintaining a Buy rating. The analyst believes that the company’s future growth should be more stable with less associated risks. Baron Real Estate Fund in its Q4 2024 investor letter announced acquired additional shares in GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS). The fund believes that the shares are attractively valued and offer compelling long-term growth prospects. Moreover, the fund anticipates that the company will be able to secure additional high-demand power capacity in Southeast Asia and other international markets, which will extend the company’s growth profile. It is one of the best-performing growth stocks in 2025.

Baron Real Estate Fund stated the following regarding GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

“In the most recent quarter, we acquired additional shares in data center operator GDS Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:GDS). We believe the shares are attractively valued and offer compelling long-term growth prospects. Please see “Top contributors to performance for the quarter ended December 31, 2024” for more on GDS.

Shares of GDS Holdings Limited continued to perform well during the quarter, delivering returns into the mid-teens. We traveled to Asia in December to tour the company’s newly developed data center campus in Malaysia, spend additional time with GDS International’s executive team, and conduct competitor/market due diligence by meeting with the management teams of several global competitors based in Singapore. We also had the opportunity to meet the management team of the largest utility in Malaysia providing power to GDS and competitors, which provided valuable insight on the developing market. We also traveled to Hong Kong to meet, once again, with CEO/founder William Huang and CFO Daniel Newman while touring one of the company’s urban data centers with the local operating team. We came away with more confidence regarding the demand visibility and growth that GDS can capture in this region due to its first mover and other competitive advantages. In addition, we believe GDS will be able to secure additional high-demand power capacity in Southeast Asia and other international markets, which will elongate the growth profile of the company and is not currently appreciated by the broader investment community.

We remain optimistic about the company’s growth prospects over the next several years, which can be bucketed into: i) its Asia ex-China data center business (GDS International or GDSI); and ii) its mainland China data center business (GDS Holdings or GDSH)…” (Click here to read the full text)

Overall, GDS ranks 5th on our list of best performing growth stocks in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of GDS 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 time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than GDS but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.