These Overlooked AI Stocks Could Deliver Market-Beating Returns

Hidden AI gems poised to outperform—while Wall Street sleeps on the real disruptors.

Forget the usual suspects trading at nosebleed valuations. The next wave of AI alpha won't come from the megacaps everyone's piled into—it's brewing under the radar.

Unloved, underfollowed, and undervalued. These aren't the hyperscalers or chip giants grabbing headlines. They're the picks-and-shovels plays, the infrastructure builders, the niche dominators that actually make AI run.

They're leveraging large language models without the large market caps. Deploying computer vision without the bloated multiples. And they're doing it with margins that would make a FAANG stock blush.

One thing they all share? The Street hasn't priced in their AI upside yet. Analysts are too busy downgrading stocks that already ran 300% to notice the fresh momentum building elsewhere.

These names aren't just riding the trend—they're powering it. From edge computing specialists to data annotation innovators, they're the silent engines of the intelligence revolution.

And while hedge funds chase the same crowded trades, these overlooked stocks could deliver the kind of returns that make crypto pumps look tame—without the regulatory target on their back.

Wake up before the algorithms do. The real AI money isn't where everyone's looking—it's where they aren't.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Sweetgreen

(SG 2.23%) is a fast-casual salad chain, but the company is more than your typical restaurant chain. In fact, it's betting its future on a robotic assistant it calls the Infinite Kitchen. This technology helps prep, measure, and dispense ingredients for its salad bowls to make service more efficient, increase throughput, and reduce labor costs.

The company is adding Infinite Kitchens to more of its existing restaurants through retrofits, and it expects that 20 of the at least 40 restaurants it plans to open this year will use them.

Despite the promise of this technology, Sweetgreen's recent results have been underwhelming, and its stock has fallen sharply over the last year. In addition to the higher upfront spending required to build and deploy Infinite Kitchens, the company has been struggling with a broad pullback in discretionary spending among consumers and complaints about its high prices. The Southern California wildfires earlier this year also took a toll on its business. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, and the metro area is one of its biggest markets.

However, it shouldn't take much for this stock to mount a comeback, especially as its market cap has fallen to just $1 billion. Year-over-year financial comparisons should get easier in the second half of 2025, and the general and administrative expenses related to the Infinite Kitchens will deleverage as the business expands.

Sweetgreen aims to roughly quadruple its store count to at least 1,000 restaurants over the coming years. While the company is still losing money and its comparable-store sales have fallen in recent quarters, its restaurants remain popular, with an average unit volume of close to $3 million.

For its business to heat up, Sweetgreen will need some help from an improved macroeconomic climate and rebounding consumer demand, but the stock has a lot of upside potential, especially if its Infinite Kitchens deliver strong results.

2. Amplitude

Software companies have trailed behind chipmakers in capitalizing on the tailwinds of the AI boom, but one small-cap software stock that could soar due to AI-related demand is(AMPL 4.96%).

The cloud software company focuses on product analytics. It helps businesses learn how customers use their digital products, like websites and apps, so they can make improvements based on what works for users and what doesn't.

Amplitude's analytics platform, which includes a suite of features, just got supercharged by the company's launch of new AI agents that can analyze data for customers and draw conclusions, helping to ensure that they can get the most value from it.

Though it is still small, Amplitude is emerging as the leader in product analytics by outcompeting the point solutions that its customers used to rely on. It's better suited for measuring product data than popular marketing technology solutions like Google Analytics andAnalytics.

With a market cap of just around $1.5 billion, Amplitude has a lot of room to run if it builds momentum around its new AI platform.

Amplitude's growth is also accelerating now that it has moved past headwinds related to post-pandemic churn; some of its customers overinvested in its products during the pandemic.

If you're looking for an under-the-radar AI stock to buy, Amplitude is a great choice.