Tech Stocks: A Curious Collection

Now, listen closely, because the world of tech stocks is a peculiar place indeed. It’s all whizz-popping numbers and clever contraptions, and a bit like a sweet shop – tempting, but you can easily get a terrible tummy ache if you’re not careful. These days, everything’s about artificial intelligence, which is just a fancy way of saying machines pretending to be brainy. But fear not! I’ve been sniffing around, and I’ve found three companies that might just be worth a nibble. Just don’t blame me if your pockets end up lighter than a feather!

Alphabet: The Grand Sorcerer

Alphabet, you see, is a bit like a grand sorcerer, waving its wand and conjuring up all sorts of digital magic. They’ve become rather good at this AI business, especially with a clever little creation called Gemini. It’s a brainy language model, capable of answering questions and generally showing off. They’ve stuffed it into Google Search, hoping it’ll attract more clicks and, naturally, more money. And their cloud computing unit, Google Cloud, is growing at a rate that would make a beanstalk blush. It’s all very impressive, though one wonders if the beanstalk will ever reach the giant’s castle.

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But the real secret, the truly scrumptious bit, is their custom AI chips – these are called Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs for short. They’ve been tinkering with these for years, and now they run almost everything inside Alphabet. It’s like having a secret ingredient in your magic potion – it gives them a tremendous advantage. Other companies are starting to notice, and are now begging to use Alphabet’s TPUs for their own AI experiments. One company, Anthropic, has even placed an order worth a staggering $21 billion with Broadcom to get their hands on these chips. The analysts at J.P. Morgan reckon that for every 500,000 TPUs deployed, Alphabet rakes in around $13 billion. A rather tasty sum, wouldn’t you say?

Salesforce: The Data Collector

Now, Salesforce is a different beast altogether. While everyone else is chasing the shiny new AI toys, Salesforce has been quietly becoming the world’s biggest collector of data. They’re experts at organizing information, breaking down those pesky data silos that plague so many businesses. They’ve built something called Data Cloud (now Data 360), which can suck up data from all sorts of places, even from Snowflake, a rather chilly cloud storage provider. They’ve also swallowed up Informatica, a company that specializes in master data management. It’s all rather clever, and it allows Salesforce to become the ultimate record-keeper for any organization.

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This is particularly important for something called agentic AI, where AI agents are supposed to go off and complete tasks without any human supervision. The problem is, these agents need clean, organized data to work properly. Salesforce provides exactly that. It significantly reduces the chances of these agents hallucinating – which, as you can imagine, could lead to all sorts of trouble. The opportunity in agentic AI is enormous, and Salesforce is perfectly positioned to take advantage of it. The stock has been a bit wobbly lately, which means it might just be a good time to snap up some shares while they’re still reasonably priced. It trades at a forward price-to-sales multiple of around 5, and a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 19.

UiPath: The Robot Herder

Finally, we have UiPath. They’re the masters of robot process automation – or RPA, as they call it. It’s all about using software bots to automate simple tasks, like data entry. It’s a bit like having a tiny army of obedient robots doing your bidding. But UiPath is now moving beyond simple automation and becoming an AI agent orchestration platform. They can manage agents from all sorts of different vendors, even Salesforce. They’ve built something called Maestro, which allows customers to create AI agents with no coding required.

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UiPath is a leader in governance and compliance, which is essential for managing these non-human identities. They can also assign tasks to the right agents or bots, ensuring that simple, rule-based tasks are handled by the cheaper software bots. Managing AI agents from various vendors is going to become increasingly important, and UiPath is one of the companies best positioned to handle this. Their revenue is starting to accelerate, and the stock is cheap, trading at a forward P/S multiple of under 5 and a forward P/E of approximately 21. So, there you have it – three companies that might just make your pockets a little bit jollier. But remember, investing is always a bit of a gamble. So, tread carefully, and don’t blame me if things go pear-shaped!

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2026-01-16 22:33