2025 hasn’t treated all artificial intelligence stocks the same.
From Google to Uber and less-well-known companies such as Constellation Software and Chegg in-between, analysts are weighing in on which international tech stocks will soar or stumble in the year ahead.
The assessment comes as 2025 wraps up – a year characterised by an unprecedented wave of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption reshaping the technology sector.
Businesses across the globe accelerated investment in AI-powered tools, cloud infrastructure and data-driven operations, with generative AI and agentic AI driving demand for more sophisticated computing power.
This surge fuelled a boom in the semiconductor industry, particularly in custom chips tailored for AI, cloud and edge workloads, positioning hardware as the critical backbone of digital transformation.
At the same time, the sector has seen significant restructuring. Many large tech companies implemented layoffs and reorganisations to focus on AI and cloud-enabled business models, shifting resources away from legacy systems.
Winners: Google and Broadcom
Jason Spilkin, co-portfolio manager at Credo, lists Alphabet-owned Google as well as Broadcom as having “shot the lights out”. He says sentiment has shifted from Google being an AI loser, to becoming an AI winner.
What sets Google apart is that it controls the full AI “stack” – from the chips and cloud infrastructure, to its Gemini AI model and its applications, including Veo and Nanobanana, says Spilkin. This vertical integration gives it a big advantage in rolling out AI across its products, he adds.
Google parent Alphabet is up 69% so far this year as of Thursday morning.
Gemini is now growing faster than OpenAI in terms of net additional users per month, says Spilkin. He also notes that over the past decade, Google has built its own tensor processing units (TPUs) in co-operation with Broadcom.
TPUs are the only scale deployment of AI chips besides NVIDIA and are a credible alternative to NVIDIA. “Indeed, TPUs are more efficient, and Google used them to train Gemini, which is a leading model per industry benchmarks.”
Winner: Constellation Software
Seleho Tsatsi, investment analyst at Anchor, says Canada-based Constellation Software represents an attractive investment opportunity because its share price has come under constant pressure this year, despite the company growing revenue and software at around 20% a year.
Tsatsi notes that the share price has fallen 24% in US dollar terms when compared with the MSCI World Index’s 21% gain. “We believe this underperformance largely reflects two major concerns: the stepping down of founder-CEO Mark Leonard and investor anxiety about the impact of AI on software businesses.”
Constellation “does not borrow significantly or issue equity to fund its acquisitions. Instead, earnings from previously acquired companies are used to fund future acquisitions,” says Tsatsi. He adds that the “results over Constellation’s 30 years in business have been phenomenal”.
Once a poster child of ‘profitless tech’, Uber has transformed itself over the past few years into a highly-profitable business, says Tsatsi. It is also the clear leader in ride-sharing globally, apart from China, he adds.
“Uber is on track to deliver over $50 billion in 2025 revenue. It is also one of the leaders in the delivery market, going toe-to-toe with DoorDash in North America,” says Tsatsi. He adds that its operating margin has improved to nearly 10% in 2025 from a negative margin as recently as 2022.
Yet, says Tsatsi, the market still has doubts even though the share is up 47% this year. “The emergence of Waymo and the upcoming Tesla Robotaxi pose threats and opportunities.”
Uber is up 69% so far this year as of Thursday morning.
Uber is reacting by building a partner network, with CEO Dara Khosrowshahi betting that building the ride-sharing network with the most supply of rides is the way to go, says Tsatsi.
“Those rides will be a mix of human drivers and driverless options. If he can pull it off, Uber can maintain its position as the leader in the ride-sharing market and the share price will likely follow suit.”
Losers: NVIDIA and OpenAI
Spilkin says, unlike Google, NVIDIA and companies that have “hitched their wagon to them” have underperformed over the past few months, partially because Google’s TPUs are a credible competitive threat to NVIDIA’s graphics processing unit.
In addition, says Spilkin, investors are concerned that NVIDIA is spending massive and unsustained capital on AI hardware, which shareholders worry may not generate sufficient returns on capital.
NVIDIA is up 32.88% so far this year as of Thursday morning.
Spilkin also notes that OpenAI has lost its edge because its latest version is lacklustre, AI models are becoming increasingly commoditised, and there are diminishing marginal improvements.
Loser: Palantir Technologies
Tsatsi says Palantir, a software company that helps companies and government institutions deploy AI, is a stock to sell.
“Palantir’s stock price has done phenomenally well, returning 150% in the past 12 months and 567% in the past five years,” says Tsatsi. He notes its share growth has been driven by incredible operational performance.
“Palantir’s revenue is currently growing 47% year-on-year… at $4 billion in revenue, it has reached a scale that not many enterprise software companies do.”
Tsatsi explains that Palantir is, despite this, a sell because it is trading far higher than its actual valuation. “We do not doubt that the margins and growth that Palantir is producing are impressive. But at current valuation levels, we think it wise for investors to take chips off the table.”
Chegg, an online education company that offers textbook and writing tools, has been dramatically affected by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, says Tsatsi. “Education is a natural use-case for LLMs. Users can go as deep down a rabbit hole on a topic as they want to.”
Chegg is down 44.23% so far this year as of Thursday morning.
While AI is a great tool, it still suffers from hallucinations, says Tsatsi.
“But it’s a model that looks very competitive when compared to incumbent edtech players like Chegg. Students can use LLMs for free or pay and get access to a model that does a lot more than just education.”
While management responses to market shifts are encouraging, the rapid decline in the legacy business makes for a challenging and uncertain outlook, says Tsatsi. Since ChatGPT was first released on 30 November 2022, Chegg’s share price is down around 97%.
Comeback potential: Microsoft
Microsoft, says Spilkin, has loosened its ties with OpenAI through moves such as offering Claude.ai developer, Anthropic, a competing model that excels at coding, on its platform – probably due to customer demand.
“Our view is that Microsoft’s AI platform could likely mimic Azure, which is multi-tenant and offers competing databases, Oracle and software-as-a-service, Adobe, on which they collect a fee.”
As a result, it seems mutually beneficial to both Microsoft and Google for Azure cloud to offer TPUs, Gemini, Veo and Nanobanana to corporate clients – especially in creative industries, he says.
