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2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks to Buy Now, According to Wall Street

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  • The Nasdaq Composite returned 12% annually during the last two decades, and investors can reasonably expect similar returns in the future.

  • AppLovin is an adtech company that has differentiated itself from peers with superior targeting capabilities, driven by its artificial intelligence (AI) recommendation engine called Axon.

  • MongoDB develops the leading document-oriented database, a technology that lends itself to AI applications, and the current valuation is cheap versus the three-year average.

  • 10 stocks we like better than AppLovin ›

Anticipating what the stock market will do in any given year is impossible, but investors can lean into long-term trends. For instance, the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) soared 875% in the last 20 years, compounding at 12% annually, due to strength in technology stocks. That period encompasses such a broad range of market and economic conditions that similar returns are quite plausible in the future.

Indeed, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) should be a tailwind for the technology sector, and most Wall Street analysts anticipate substantial gains in these Nasdaq stocks:

  • Among 31 analysts who follow AppLovin (NASDAQ: APP), the median target price of $470 per share implies 40% upside from the current share price of $335.

  • Among 39 analysts that follow MongoDB (NASDAQ: MDB), the median target price of $275 per share implies 34% upside from the current share price of $205.

Here’s what investors should know about AppLovin and MongoDB.

Image source: Getty Images.

AppLovin builds adtech software that helps developers market and monetize applications across mobile and connected TV campaigns. The company is also piloting ad tech tools for e-commerce brands. Importantly, its platform leans on a sophisticated AI engine called Axon to optimize campaign results by matching advertiser demand with the best publisher inventory.

AppLovin has put a great deal of effort into building its Axon recommendation engine. The company started acquiring video game studios several years ago to train the underlying machine learning models that optimize targeting, and subsequent upgrades have encouraged media buyers to spend more on the platform over time.

Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak recently called AppLovin the “best executor” in the adtech industry. In particular, he called attention to superior ad targeting capabilities driven by its “best-in-class” machine learning engine, which has led to outperformance versus the broader in-app advertising market since 2023.

AppLovin reported strong first-quarter financial results. Revenue increased 40% to $1.4 billion, as strong sales growth in the advertising segment offset a decline in sales in the mobile games segment. Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) net income increased 149% to $1.67 per diluted share. And management guided for 69% advertising sales growth in the second quarter.

Wall Street estimates AppLovin’s earnings will increase at 53% annually through 2026. That makes the current valuation of 61 times earnings look rather inexpensive. Investors should pounce on the opportunity to buy this stock today. Personally, I would start with a small position and add shares periodically.

MongoDB is the most popular document database. Whereas traditional relational databases (also called SQL databases) store information in structured rows and columns, the document model is more scalable and flexible. It supports structured data, but also unstructured data like emails, social media posts, images, videos, and websites.

Every application requires a database. It is where information can be stored, modified, and retrieved when needed. But the document model is particularly well suited to analytics, content management, e-commerce, payments, and artificial intelligence applications due to its superior scalability and flexibility. MongoDB is leaning into demand for AI.

Last year, the company introduced MAAP (MongoDB AI Application Program), a collection of resources and reference architectures that help programmers build applications with AI capabilities. Additionally, MongoDB recently acquired Voyage AI, a company that develops embedding and reranking models that make AI applications more accurate and reliable.

CEO Dev Ittycheria told analysts: “MongoDB now brings together three things that modern AI-powered applications need: real-time data, powerful search, and smart retrieval. By combining these into one platform, we make it dramatically easier for developers to build intelligent, responsive apps without stitching together multiple systems.”

MongoDB reported encouraging first-quarter financial results, exceeding estimates on the top and bottom lines. Customers climbed 16% to 57,100, the highest net additions in six years. Revenue increased 22% to $549 million, a sequential acceleration, and non-GAAP earnings jumped 96% to $1.00 per diluted share.

Going forward, Grand View Research estimates the database management system market will increase at 13% annually through 2030. MongoDB should grow faster as it continues to gain market share. That makes the present valuation of 7.8 times sales look reasonable, especially when the three-year average is 13.2 times sales. Patient investors should feel comfortable buying a small position today.

Before you buy stock in AppLovin, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and AppLovin wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $694,758!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $998,376!*

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Trevor Jennewine has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends AppLovin and MongoDB. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

History Says the Nasdaq Will Soar: 2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks to Buy Now, According to Wall Street was originally published by The Motley Fool



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China’s Moonshot AI releases open-source model to reclaim market position

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BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese artificial intelligence startup Moonshot AI released a new open-source AI model on Friday, joining a wave of similar releases from local rivals, as it seeks to reclaim its position in the competitive domestic market.

The model, called Kimi K2, features enhanced coding capabilities and excels at general agent tasks and tool integration, allowing it to break down complex tasks more effectively, the company said in a statement.

Moonshot claimed the model outperforms mainstream open-source models in some areas, including DeepSeek’s V3, and rival capabilities of leading U.S. models such as those from Anthropic in certain functions such as coding.

The release follows a trend among Chinese companies toward open-sourcing AI models, contrasting with many U.S. tech giants like OpenAI and Google that keep their most advanced AI models proprietary. Some American firms, including Meta Platforms, have also released open-source models.

Open-sourcing allows developers to showcase their technological capabilities and expand developer communities as well as their global influence, a strategy likely to help China counter U.S. efforts to limit Beijing’s tech progress.

Other Chinese companies that have released open-source models include DeepSeek, Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.

Founded in 2023 by Tsinghua University graduate Yang Zhilin, Moonshot is among China’s prominent AI startups and is backed by internet giants including Alibaba.

The company gained prominence in 2024 when users flocked to its platform for its long-text analysis capabilities and AI search functions.

However, its standing has declined this year following DeepSeek’s release of low-cost models, including the R1 model launched in January that disrupted the global AI industry.

Moonshot’s Kimi application ranked third in monthly active users last August but dropped to seventh place by June, according to aicpb.com, a Chinese website that tracks AI products.

(Reporting by Liam Mo and Brenda Goh, Editing by Louise Heavens)



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AI is rewriting the rules of the insurance industry

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Despite its traditionally risk-averse nature, the insurance industry is being fundamentally reshaped by AI.

AI has already become vital for the insurance industry, touching everything from complex risk calculations to the way insurers talk to their customers. However, while nearly eight out of ten companies are dipping their toes in the AI water, a similar number admit it hasn’t actually made them any more money.

Such figures reveal a simple truth: just buying the fancy new tech isn’t enough. The real winners will be the ones who figure out how to weave it into the very fabric of who they are and everything they do.

You can see the most dramatic changes right at the heart of the business: handling claims. That mountain of paperwork and endless phone calls, a process that could drag on for weeks, is finally being bulldozed by AI.

A deployment by New York-based insurer Lemonade back in 2021 resulted in settling over a third of its claims in just three seconds, with no human input. Or look at a major US travel insurer that handles 400,000 claims a year; it went from a completely manual system to one that was 57% automated, cutting down processing times from weeks to just minutes.

However, this isn’t just about moving faster; it’s about getting it right. AI can slash the kind of costly human errors that lead to claims leakage in the insurance industry by as much as 30%. The knock-on effect is a huge productivity leap, with adjusters able to handle 40-50% more cases. This frees up the real experts to stop being paper-pushers and start focusing on the tricky cases where a human touch and genuine empathy make all the difference.

It’s a similar story for the underwriters, the people who calculate the risks. AI is giving them superpowers, letting them analyse colossal amounts of data from all sorts of places – like telematics or credit scores – that a person could never sift through alone. It can even draft an initial risk report with incredible accuracy by looking at past data and policies in the blink of an eye.

In practice, this helps create pricing that is fairer and more accurately reflects a person’s unique situation. Zurich, for example, used a modern platform to build a risk management tool that made their assessments 90% more accurate.

Suddenly, underwriting isn’t about looking in the rearview mirror anymore—it’s a living, breathing process that can adapt on the fly to new, complex threats like cyberattacks or the effects of climate change.

But this isn’t just about back-office wizardry. When deployed in the insurance industry, AI is completely changing the conversation between insurers and the people they serve. It’s allowing a move away from simply reacting to problems to proactively helping customers.

AI chatbots can offer 24/7 support, getting smarter with every question they answer. This lets the human team focus on the more difficult conversations. The real game-changer, though, is making things personal. 

By understanding a customer’s policy and behaviour, AI can gently nudge them with a renewal reminder or suggest a product that actually fits their life, like usage-based car insurance. It’s about showing customers you actually get them, which builds the kind of loyalty that’s been so hard to come by in an industry where over 30% of claimants feel dissatisfied, and 60% blame slow settlements.

This protective instinct also helps the whole system. AI is a brilliant fraud detective for the insurance industry and beyond, spotting weird patterns in data that a person would miss, and has the potential to cut fraud-related losses by up to 40%. It keeps everyone honest and protects the business and its customers.

What’s pouring fuel on this fire of change? A new breed of low-code platforms. They are the accelerators, letting insurers build and launch new apps and services much faster than before. In a world where customer tastes and rules can change overnight, that kind of speed is everything.

The best part of such tools is they democratise access and put the power to innovate into more hands. They allow regular business users – or ‘citizen developers’ – to build the tools they need without having to be coding geniuses. These platforms often come with strong security and controls, meaning this newfound speed doesn’t have to mean sacrificing safety or compliance, which is non-negotiable for an industry like insurance.

When you step back and look at the big picture, it’s clear that getting on board with AI isn’t just a tech project; it’s a make-or-break business strategy. Those who jumped in early are already pulling away from the pack, seeing things like a 14% jump in customer retention and a 48% rise in Net Promoter Scores. 

The market for this technology is set to explode to over $14 billion dollars by 2034, and some believe AI could add $1.1 trillion in value to the industry every year. But the biggest roadblocks aren’t about the technology itself; they’re about people and old habits.

Data, especially in an industry like insurance, is often stuck in old systems which stops AI from seeing the whole picture. To get past this, you need more than clever software. You need leaders with a clear vision, a willingness to change the company culture, and a commitment to training their people.

The winners in this new era won’t be the ones tinkering with AI in a corner—they’ll be the ones who lead from the top, with a clear plan to make it a part of their DNA. This will require an understanding that it’s not just about doing old things better, but about finding entirely new ways to bring value and build trust.

Learn more about how AI is rewriting the rules of the insurance industry at the upcoming webinar “From Complexity to Clarity: AI + Agility Layer for Intelligent Insurance” on July 16, 2025, at 7PM BST / 2PM ET. Industry experts from Appian and EXL will share real-world examples and practical insights into how leading carriers are implementing these technologies. Registration is available at the webinar link.

Featured speakers include:

  • Vikram Machado, Senior Vice President & Practice Leader – Life, Annuities, Retirements & Group Insurance, EXL
  • Vikrant Saraswat, Vice President – AI Consulting, EXL
  • Jack Moroney, Enterprise Account Executive – Insurance & Financial Services, Appian
  • Andrew Kearns, Insurance Industry Lead, Appian
  • Michaela Morari, Senior Solution Consultant – Insurance & Financial Services, Appian

See also: UK and Singapore form alliance to guide AI in finance



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Clarivate Unveils Enhanced 2025 G20 Research, Innovation Scorecard with Expanded Data, AI Insights

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Clarivate (NYSE:CLVT) is one of the cheap IT stocks hedge funds are buying. On July 9, Clarivate released its annual 2025 G20 Research and Innovation Scorecard. This scorecard was developed by experts at the Institute for Scientific Information/ISI at Clarivate and provides a data-driven overview of the research and innovation capabilities of G20 member nations.

The 2025 scorecard now incorporates data from the Emerging Sources Citation Index/ESCI, which is a part of the Web of Science Core Collection, to provide a more comprehensive view of global research. The scorecard has been refined to better emphasize collaboration and impact, reflecting South Africa’s Ubuntu philosophy, the G20 host for 2025.

Clarivate Unveils Enhanced 2025 G20 Research, Innovation Scorecard with Expanded Data, AI Insights

A state-of-the-art computer lab filled with engineers working on new analytics technologies.

Dynamic visualizations are included to showcase each member’s research performance within their economic context and academic priorities. New additions also include OECD field-level breakdowns, insights into open access, and research aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), highlighting how G20 nations are collaborating to address global challenges.

Clarivate (NYSE:CLVT) is an information services provider in the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Asia Pacific.

While we acknowledge the potential of CLVT as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you’re looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now.

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



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