Forget NVDA: These 3 AI Stocks Have 5x Potential

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There used to be a time in the market when it was easy to find relatively cheap stocks with very high growth potential. Many investors want more spiciness than what Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has to offer, because a $4.2 trillion company is unlikely to hand you multibagger gains.

However, all the alternative AI stocks with multibagger potential have already turned into multibaggers. These stocks are trading at nosebleed valuations, and they have years of growth priced in. You can still make very profitable investments in these stocks, but the risk-reward ratio is nowhere near as good.

That doesn’t mean there still aren’t hidden gems deeper in the market. Here are three AI stocks with 5x potential.

Upstart Holdings (UPST)

Upstart Holdings (NASDAQ:UPST) sells a cloud service that banks and credit unions plug into when they want to underwrite consumer credit in real time. It uses a machine learning model that looks at more than a thousand variables to determine how creditworthy they are. The model spits out an instant yes or no and an interest rate. In Q1, 92% of loans were automated.

Upstart processed about $5.9 billion in loan originations last year, a sliver of the roughly $253 billion in unsecured personal loans that Americans have outstanding and an even tinier slice of the multi-trillion-dollar broader credit market.

The company has recently pushed into auto refinancing, small-dollar loans for near-prime borrowers, and home equity lines, and each of these verticals is many times larger than small personal loans.

In my opinion, it’s a bank hesitancy problem as the mini banking crisis in 2023 stunted banks from experimenting with lending. However, they are starting to get more interested in integrating AI and Upstart’s tech, and this has led to solid results.

Analysts expect positive EPS this year at $1.5 and $2.4 next year. Revenue is expected to cross $1 billion, up 58.61%. Rate cuts would accelerate UPST even more.

Applied Digital (APLD)

Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD) is one of the many crypto mining companies that are using data centers and cloud computing as a fig leaf to hide the core business. However, what makes it different is that the company has been able to do so quite successfully, at least compared to its peers.

Management has spent the last two years going all-in on data centers that can house the liquid-cooled GPU clusters required for artificial intelligence training and inference. Its flagship property is the Ellendale campus in North Dakota, a 400 megawatt site that sits next to ultra-cheap baseload power and already has a substation capable of handling the load.

In June, the firm signed a fifteen-year, 250 MW lease with CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV). Applied Digital believes it will generate around $7 billion in total revenue from this.

Construction crews are now racing to bring the first 100 MW online before year-end, while another 150 MW is possible by mid-2026. If the option on the third 150 MW building is exercised, Applied could be collecting rent on almost half a gigawatt by 2027, a scale that would place it among the top independent AI data-center operators in North America.

APLD stock is up over 139% in the past year, but a five-fold increase is possible as it lands more business from data center companies like CoreWeave in the coming years.

Analysts see $1.1 billion in 2030 revenue and $81.7 million in net income. The stock trades at 8.4x sales now, so a 5x is possible, though this is obviously a high-risk, high-reward bet.

Alphawave IP Group (AWEVF)

Alphawave IP Group is a semiconductor company that specializes in high-speed wired connectivity and computing technologies.

The whole story rests on a handful of megatrends that keep widening the runway. AI training clusters are doubling in size roughly every six to nine months, which means every new generation of accelerators needs more bandwidth per square millimeter. At the same time, the push toward disaggregated compute, chiplet architectures, and advanced packaging rewards companies that can deliver proven IP rather than full chips. Alphawave sits right at that intersection.

AWEVF stock is up 102.2% year-to-date, and the financials are also solid. Revenue has surged from $33 million in 2020 to $308 million in 2024. Analysts see around 24% annual revenue growth in the coming years, along with 65% annual  EPS (minus non-recurring items) growth. Analysts see 30.1% revenue growth in 2026, sustainable as long as the broader AI market keeps booming.

25% annual growth 2025-2030 puts 2030 revenue ~$1.15 billion. Paying the current 5x sales multiple gives you a 3x return from here. If Alphawave can become solidly profitable, a 10x sales multiple is possible. The popular semiconductor stocks today trade at 20-30x sales.

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