Prediction: This Unloved AI Stock Has What it Takes to Outrun Nvidia in the Second Half of 2025

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock continues to be the talk of the town. Jensen Huang’s GPU empire has really made the most of the AI boom. And while there will be other winners from this revolution, especially as agents and the race to AGI (artificial general intelligence) fuels the boom, I do think that the AI chip titan, as wonderful as it is, isn’t quite the best deal in the tech world.

Sure, it’s got the growth drivers, but expectations are also quite high, and after flirting with a $4.5 trillion market cap, I do think investors must ask themselves how much more room the behemoth has to run. With a lofty valuation and even more expectations riding into the next round of quarterly earnings, I’d be inclined to take profits, as painful as it may be to trim your winners. As the “Blackwell boom,” the beginning of “Rubin fever” and AI demand run hot into 2026, I’m not so sure the stock can gain even if chip sales continue to overwhelm.

Nvidia is a great stock, and it’ll continue to do well. But there’s better value elsewhere in AI.

Add the Chinese market, which may soon find itself open for business, into the equation, and NVDA stock looks priced for perfection. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say NVDA shares will do well over the next 12-18 months, but the gains won’t be nearly as impressive as those enjoyed in the last 12-18 months. Personally, I’d much rather be in the likes of an Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) while it’s in breakout mode. 

Alphabet shares are far cheaper despite soaring 27% in the last three months, now going for 21.7 times trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) or 20.9 times next year’s expected earnings. Though OpenAI and ChatGPT have been the leaders of the AI boom, it’s worth noting that the popular large language model (LLM) now has some serious competition from the likes of Google Gemini and Elon Musk’s Grok.

Google Gemini appears to be closing the gap even as overblown antitrust pressures weigh

Indeed, Google Gemini is closing the gap and could stand to outshine the latest and greatest ChatGPT model in some respects. In any case, the race is getting tight, and with that, I think it’s time to treat Google as one of the AI leaders. Personally, I don’t think GOOG stock has as much AI hype priced in despite its profound AI firepower.

Chalk it up to rising AI search competition or climbing antitrust risks (an Alphabet break-up would actually be a good thing for shareholders, in my opinion, given the sum of the parts is worth a whole lot more).

As Perplexity, one of Google Search’s rivals, looks to make a long-shot deal (that could be worth $34.5 billion) to buy up the Chrome browser from Google, perhaps a move that would take some antitrust pressure off the AI behemoth’s back, things could get very interesting for GOOG stock as it looks to break out in a big way.

Perhaps the biggest AI tailwinds aren’t yet on Wall Street’s radar

In time, I do think Google Search will be able to defend its slice of the internet. It won’t be easy, but it has the AI to fend off other AI threats. Additionally, I’m most excited about AI’s potential to create new businesses that can significantly boost Alphabet’s growth. Indeed, Google still has the disruptive mindset, even though it’s being forced to play a bit of defense as rivals like Perplexity AI look to gain more usage from people who go straight to Google.com without even thinking about it.

Whether we’re talking about Waymo (self-driving vehicles) or Google’s collabs in AI-driven drug discovery, there are so many under-the-radar projects that may actually grow to become a serious growth engine one day. For now, AI could help Google Cloud level up in a way that’d help it gain ground on its public cloud rivals. Personally, I think Google has the most cloud growth potential as it may very well end up with the biggest AI muscles come 2026.