Confluent (CFLT) Expands Cloud Capabilities for Faster, Smarter Agentic AI
Speaking on CNBC's 'Halftime Report', CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and CNBC PRO contributor Josh Brown said that he believes the most important theme for the stock market right now is artificial intelligence, not tariffs.
'The most important thing to come out of this past earnings report is that AI is more important than tariffs to the stock market.'
Brown cited JPMorgan research, noting that the term 'AI' was mentioned 2.6 times more often than the word 'tariff' in the last round of S & P 500 earnings reports.
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He even said that those Big Tech companies that affirmed or raised guidance have been saviors, protecting the stock market from the massive turmoil in April.
'This is an AI driven tape. This is still the most important theme in the entire market. Yes, there are other themes. Yes, there are other sectors doing well, but absent AI, there's just no chance that we would have pulled this this spring out of the hole the way that we have, and that's because of the affirmed guidance.'
That said, a report from Silicon Valley Bank has revealed how venture capital firms focused on artificial intelligence are behind much of the growth in the startup market. Meanwhile, companies in other areas are struggling to raise cash.
'Exclude AI investment and the story changes. There is no meaningful uptick for companies not leveraging AI, with investment from this group essentially flat for the last year.'
For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds. The hedge fund data is as of Q4 2024.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points ().
A team of consultants in suits, discussing the importance of stream governance for real-time data.Confluent, Inc. (NASDAQ:CFLT) is a technology company that provides data streaming platforms. On May 20, the data streaming pioneer announced new Confluent Cloud capabilities to help process and protect data more easily. These include Snapshot Queries, new in Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink®, which integrate real-time and historic data processing to make artificial intelligence (AI) agents and analytics smarter. Confluent Cloud network (CCN) routing streamlines private networking for Apache Flink®, while IP Filtering secures data for agentic AI and analytics. The updates aim to simplify data processing, improve decision making, as well as strengthen security.
'Agentic AI is moving from hype to enterprise adoption as organizations look to gain a competitive edge and win in today's market. But without high-quality data, even the most advanced systems can't deliver real value. The new Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink® features make it possible to blend real-time and batch data so that enterprises can trust their agentic AI to drive real change.'
Overall, CFLT ranks 8th on our list of AI stocks that investors are watching today. While we acknowledge the potential of CFLT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CFLT and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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