Years later, when investors look back at 2024, they will inevitably think of the booming stocks benefiting from the AI craze, as well as those that, while riding the AI wave, unexpectedly plummeted due to specific company issues.

Investors who are passionate about USA tech stocks will have a deeper impression of 2024, as the bullish sentiment around 'AI Trade' grew increasingly frantic. Large technology giants and high-weight index stocks like NVIDIA (NVDA.US) and Meta Platforms (META.US) led the S&P 500 Index to significant gains for two consecutive years, continuously pushing the benchmark index to new highs.

In addition to large tech giants, many other types of popular stocks were traded. With significant investments in AI by tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, not only did the stock prices of AI infrastructure suppliers like AI Chips, Datacenter network equipment, Electrical Utilities, and Server manufacturers soar, but it also boosted software stocks focused on AI applications and electrical giants providing substantial power support for datacenters—such as Vistra (VST.US)—even those tech companies with massive data libraries used for developing large AI models saw their stock prices rise significantly—like Reddit (RDDT.US), known as the 'American version of Tieba.'

Scott Youshak, Managing Director of the equity strategy department at Truist Advisory Services, stated: 'Companies that are not first movers in the AI trend like NVIDIA and Taiwan Semiconductor are starting to see growth in both their performance and stock prices. Currently, AI is an area of interest in technology stocks, but we expect a broader range of tech stock performance by 2025 than seen in recent years, with some tech companies—and not just the large tech giants and chip stocks—showing exceptionally bright performances.'

This year in the USA tech stock market has also experienced many dramatic events akin to Hollywood movies, among which one of the most popular AI Hardware companies, Super Micro Computer (SMCI.US), which was also one of the AI superstars of 2023, saw its stock price plummet due to serious accounting issues, even threatening its normal listing on the USA market.

An old chip giant from the USA—Intel (INTC.US)—also benefited from the AI craze, but compared to its long-term competitors NVIDIA and AMD, it is regarded as the biggest loser in the AI arms race. The key issue is that the company's turnaround plan faced significant setbacks, and the continuous deterioration of its fundamentals led to a stock price crash, ultimately forcing its CEO to resign.

The following is a summary of the five most actively traded stocks in the USA stock market based on the general opinion of Wall Street analysts, frequently appearing in financial media headlines, along with the outlook for each stock's price movement in 2025. From the perspective of stock performance in 2024, Reddit, Palantir, and Vistra saw their stock prices soar due to the large-scale expansion of AI-related business; while Intel and Super Micro Computer experienced frequent stock price declines due to company-specific issues.

Reddit

The social media company Reddit, known as the "American version of Tieba," received a warm welcome from global investors during its initial public offering in March, but few anticipated that the investment returns since the IPO would reach such a crazy level.

Since its listing, the stock price of this social media network owner has risen an astonishing 382%, partly due to training data licensing agreements with leaders in the AI field such as OpenAI and Google, which use Reddit's vast proprietary data resources to train their large language models. Coupled with ongoing targeted investments by Reddit to better monetize its user base, this led to an incredibly strong quarterly performance report and outlook in October, pushing the company's stock price to continue soaring.

According to a recent research report released by Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Novak, Reddit's stock price has significantly outperformed Meta and other social media peers in the past six months, and still has considerable upside potential in 2025. Earlier this month he upgraded the stock's rating to "Shareholding" and stated that training agreements with AI leaders, increased user engagement, and advertising initiatives will continue to drive performance and stock price growth.

Morgan Stanley raised its 12-month target stock price for Reddit considerably from Wall Street's lowest target price to Wall Street's highest target price, nearly quadrupling it to $200. In contrast, Reddit's stock price closed at $163.720 on Thursday. In this bullish research report, Morgan Stanley wrote, "Our bearish stance on Reddit year-to-date has been wrong." "However, as we look to 2025, we believe we haven't completely missed this rapidly scaling platform that is launching a series of user interaction models and new advertising programs."

Statistics show that the social media company Reddit had its best monthly performance in October, with a rise of up to 81%, as both Reddit's performance and outlook significantly exceeded expectations, indicating that its investments in advertising technology are yielding positive returns. Additionally, Reddit's large-scale, high-value user-generated content provides a rich data source for training large language models for leaders in the AI field, such as Google and OpenAI, which is also a key source of the company's performance growth.

Reddit has significantly improved its profitability by diversifying its business revenue sources (such as ai training data licenses and advertising business) and user growth. Additionally, various generative ai applications on the Reddit platform have not only greatly enhanced the experience and loyalty of Reddit users but also opened up new revenue channels, significantly strengthening the company's fundamental stability.

Palantir Technologies

Currently, very few software companies can continuously achieve over 50% high growth in sales from AI services, but Palantir (PLTR.US) is a typical exception. The incredibly strong demand from the US government and major corporations for its AI products, which are fully integrated with the Palantir data analysis ecosystem, has fueled the growth curve, with overall sales expected to grow by 26% in 2024, surpassing the 17% growth of the previous year.

In 2024, the company's stock price soared by 332%, with its market cap skyrocketing from 37 billion USD at the beginning of the year to nearly 170 billion USD currently. Next week, this tech stock will officially join the Nasdaq 100 Index. This means that the "AI super bull stock" Palantir will be formally included in the stock coverage of the globally popular Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (QQQ.US), which tracks the Nasdaq 100 Index.

Focusing on "AI + data analysis", the data software giant Palantir's revenue in the third quarter significantly exceeded analyst expectations, and it has raised its revenue outlook for the current period, mainly due to the increasing demand from the US federal government and corporations for its generative AI-based application software. Palantir's Q3 revenue was 0.726 billion USD, a year-on-year growth of 30%, far exceeding expectations, with net income nearly doubling to set a new high for the company; even more significantly, Palantir expects that its commercial revenue in the USA will grow by over 50% in 2024.

Palantir的生成式AI平台“AIP”与Palantir现有数据分析软件生态系统全面集成，客户可以通过简单问答的方式调用Palantir核心模块和功能，使企业组织能够有效地将生成式人工智能应用于数据分析，提高洞察力和运营效率。该平台支持一系列人工智能技术驱动的应用，从物料短缺自动化管理、物流和供应链优化到预测性维护和威胁检测等复杂算力场景。

Despite the stock price's skyrocketing increase this year, some Wall Street analysts remain very cautious about the stock. However, the analyst team at Wedbush believes that as expectations for performance growth driven by AI significantly heat up, the stock will bring larger investment returns in 2025.

According to statistics compiled by Bloomberg, Palantir's PE exceeds 150x, making it the second most expensive stock in the S&P 500 Index, second only to Ventas. Among the 22 Wall Street Analysts tracked by Bloomberg, only three rated Palantir as a 'Buy,' highlighting Wall Street's cautious stance towards Palantir, which has seen its stock price reach new highs repeatedly.

Vistra

As AI applications like ChatGPT sweep across the globe, the energy demand from data centers globally has become so immense that this year, some utility stocks that have long been overlooked by the market entered the sights of top investment institutions on Wall Street. The demand for AI computing power closely tied to AI training/inference has accelerated, and the power usage of data centers, originally known as 'power-hungry beasts,' is expected to continue surging in the coming years.

The energy-intensive AI data centers, which are expanding exponentially with the fierce demand for AI chips, rely heavily on power supply as their core foundation. This is also the origin of the market view that 'the end of AI is electricity.'

According to forecasts from Boston Consulting Group, the share of electricity consumption by data centers in the USA is expected to double, increasing from 126 terawatt-hours in 2022 to 390 terawatt-hours by 2030. Terawatt-hours are used to describe the largest levels of power consumption and are typically used for national-level energy statistics and the planning and assessment of major energy projects. Large industrial facilities, such as super steel mills, may consume less than 10 terawatt-hours of electricity in a year.

The American electrical producer Vistra Corp. is the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 Index in 2024, with a price increase of 256%, even surpassing NVIDIA's increase of 164% so far this year. The even stronger growth of Palantir was only included in the S&P 500 Index in September.

Vistra's revenue has seen significant growth since 2024 due to the enormous electricity consumption of data centers. With some government agencies and American tech giants promising to invest more heavily in the AI field next year, particularly in constructing and expanding energy-intensive data centers, the outlook for electrical utilities and other infrastructure providers looks very optimistic. Data centers are arguably the most critical large infrastructure projects of the AI era, essential for the efficient operation of generative AI applications like ChatGPT and the iterative updates of large AI models like GPT-4o.

According to the latest forecast data from Citigroup, one of Wall Street's financial giants, by 2025, the capital expenditures related to data centers by the four largest technology giants in the USA are expected to grow by at least 40% year-on-year. These massive capital expenditures are essentially linked to generative AI, indicating that the computing power demand for AI applications like ChatGPT remains substantial. The Citigroup analysis team emphasizes that the adoption of AI is still in the early to mid-stage, particularly driven by the hot AI application of 'AI agents' on the enterprise side, which will lead to a surge in demand for AI applications and thus a strong need for computing resources, stimulating the tech giants to significantly expand and build new global data centers.

Vistra and its electrical counterpart, Constellation Energy Corp (CEG.US), stand out among American public utilities because they are positioned as independent power producers, meaning they sell electricity at market prices, which is drastically different from some public utilities regulated by the US government.

Intel

As 2024 approaches, the optimism of chip stock investors has lifted Intel's share price, as they believe that the struggling legacy chip manufacturer will fully turn around its operation status due to improvements in the chip foundry business and increased penetration of AI PCs. However, such bets have proven to be a significant mistake this year. Perhaps the chip foundry business and AI PCs could help Intel out of the mire, but certainly not this year.

Intel's stock price has dropped by 62% so far this year, further lagging behind competitors like NVIDIA and AMD in the PC and datacenter chip sectors, while also facing rising costs associated with building new factories and investing in 2nm and below chip production technologies. In August, the company finally succumbed to the long-standing pressure of cash-burning in the chip foundry business, suspending the dividend that had been in place since 1992, and announced a layoff plan affecting up to 15,000 people. CEO Pat Gelsinger was forced to resign earlier this month.

While the board of directors searches for Gelsinger's permanent successor, Intel is managed by two interim CEOs. Due to the lack of a core helmsman, Intel's path forward seems more ambiguous than ever. Questions regarding whether the chip foundry strategy will change, particularly whether Intel will continue to strive to catch up with Taiwan Semiconductor's ambitions in chip foundry, and whether the company will undergo a split to alleviate cash flow crises, may remain unanswered in the coming months. Among over 50 Wall Street analysts tracked by Bloomberg, only 7 have recommended buying Intel stocks.

Bullish analysts on Intel pointed out that the 18A high-end chip manufacturing process will be key to the future fate of Intel's chip foundry business. The '18A' category includes both the 1.8nm process chips that Intel plans and the advanced packaging roadmap for 3D chiplets. Intel senior executive Naga Chandrasekaran stated at an event hosted by UBS Group in early December that despite facing some technical issues and execution difficulties, several key milestones have already been reached. 'At this node, there are no substantial challenges left. The remaining issues are primarily overcoming yield challenges and defect density challenges.'

In Intel's chip foundry plans, Intel will manufacture chips for any company, including long-time competitors NVIDIA and AMD; Gelsinger has predicted that by 2030, Intel's chip foundry business will reach the second largest scale globally, which may be slightly behind the king of chip foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor.

super micro computer

Super Micro Computer appears to be unstoppable in the first half of this year, as xAI, founded by Musk, along with various leaders in AI, continue to throw AI server orders at the company, and their datacenters have seen skyrocketing demand for AI servers.

Due to its long-standing close partnership with NVIDIA, Super Micro Computer, which is deeply tied to NVIDIA, relies on its strong supply chain and long-term cooperation with NVIDIA, often obtaining larger volumes of NVIDIA AI GPU shipments. Super Micro Computer has long been known in the industry for its customized server solutions. However, all of this underwent a major reversal in the second half of this year due to an accounting scandal, with NVIDIA even shifting its orders from Super Micro Computer to other server suppliers.

The company's stock peaked in March, and just a few days ago it was included in the S&P 500 Index, with a market cap of 66 billion dollars. However, in August, the company became a target for well-known short-selling institutions. A day later, the company postponed the release of its annual report citing internal control review, putting its listing status on Nasdaq in jeopardy. In October, its auditing firm unexpectedly resigned, leading the stock price to begin a steep decline. Recently, the NASDAQ 100 Index announced its annual component adjustments, and Super Micro Computer was removed from the index.

Since the record stock price set in March, the company's stock has now plummeted by 74%. Super Micro Computer promptly hired a new auditing firm to obtain an extension from Nasdaq, and it must submit its financial report by February 25. Meanwhile, it was reported that the company hired top Wall Street investment bank Evercore to help raise funds.