The AI wars are heating up, and Elon Musk has joined the race. Grok, X’s chatbot, is his answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While Musk has long touted Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) as one of the top AI stocks due to its self-driving technology, his attention has turned to Grok.
In May, xAI announced a series B round raising $6 billion from Saudi Arabian Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and others. These funds allow xAI to fast-track its upgrade of Grok to keep up with ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
A portion of these funds will go toward employees. With Big Tech companies and startups scrambling for competent engineers, AI talent wars have escalated. It’s now common for compensation for a top AI engineer to exceed $1 million annually.
The remaining funds will go toward infrastructure, such as AI servers, storage and networking. These AI stocks are key suppliers to the xAI Grok project. They will benefit from the increase in capital expenditure by xAI.
Nvidia (NVDA)
As the leading provider of AI chips, anyone developing large language models and AI chatbots must build on Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) infrastructure. Musk has relied on the semiconductor’s giant chips for Tesla’s AI projects. Once again, he will resort to Nvidia’s hardware to power Grok.
According to the Information, xAI acquired over 20,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs in 2023 to train its Grok 2 model. However, the chatbot still lags behind the latest GPT 4o or Claude 3.5 performance. Therefore, Elon Musk must invest more in hardware and training to make xAI one of the top AI companies.
Musk estimates that a future iteration, Grok 3, would need more resources, upwards of over 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs to train the model. Truly, these are very expensive chips, costing about $30,000 each. Therefore, orders from xAI will be a huge boost for Nvidia’s revenues.
Going forward, Nvidia will remain one of the top AI stocks. Its advantage in AI chips at the moment is almost unassailable. It announced the next generation AI chip architecture Blackwell in March at the GTC conference, with deliveries later this year. Ultimately, companies that want to dominate in the AI era want the best hardware – Nvidia’s.
Dell Technologies (DELL)
Another immediate beneficiary of Grok’s spending is Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL). The company is well-positioned in the AI server market to meet the needs of cloud service providers and startups like xAI. The latest disclosure that it will assist in powering Grok makes it one of the top AI stocks.
Due to its engineering advantage and technical differentiation, DELL has emerged as a leader in the AI server market. Customers like Grok favor its customizable solutions that deliver end-to-end solutions. Dell Technologies offers a wholesome AI server solution that includes design, integration, deployment, optimization and support services.
On June 20, Elon Musk disclosed that DELL was one of the suppliers that will assemble its AI servers. In a post on X, the billionaire disclosed that Dell Technologies was making half of the racks that will go into xAI’s supercomputer. In a follow-up, Michael Dell teased the AI factories they were building in partnership with Nvidia.
Lastly, besides Grok, Dell Technologies has hundreds of AI server clients. These customers have outstanding orders that guarantee demand into 2025, making Dell Technologies one of the top AI stocks for 2025. Morgan Stanley thinks DELL’s AI server momentum will accelerate, driving a $200 price target in the bullish case.
Super Micro Computer (SMCI)
Year-to-date (YTD), Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ:SMCI) has been one of the top AI stocks. Although the stock has retreated from its highs above $ 1,200, it is still up by 196% YTD as of this writing. And the gains are far from over since it will enjoy a boost from Grok.
As mentioned earlier, xAI is building an AI factory to power the latest Grok model. Super Micro Computer is one of the AI stocks that are well-positioned to profit. Particularly, it has a competitive advantage in AI servers with liquid cooling at scale and can ship over 2,000 AI server racks a month.
So, it came as no surprise when CNBC reported that Super Micro Computer would also supply xAI. It can customize AI server racks to application-specific platforms in accordance with customer needs. Furthermore, its fully functional plug-and-play systems are what xAI needs to scale Grok’s training quickly.
Considering this revenue boost, Super Micro Computer isn’t done with its rally and has more upside. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) expects the company to profit from strong demand from tier-2 cloud service providers and sovereigns. Their $1,090 price target presents over 25% from current levels.
On the date of publication, Charles Munyi did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
