These Overlooked AI Stocks Could Deliver Market-Beating Returns

Key Points

• Nearly three years after the launch of ChatGPT, AI is still the central driver of Wall Street's bull market.

• Sweetgreen's robotic kitchen assistants could be game-changers for the small restaurant chain.

• Amplitude recently launched new AI agents that could accelerate its growth in product analytics.

• 10 stocks we like better than Sweetgreen ›

It has been nearly three years since ChatGPT was launched, and the artificial intelligence (AI) craze is still driving the bull market that it helped kick off. Stocks look poised to deliver another winning year in 2025 despite earlier concerns that tariffs and other macroeconomic headwinds might trigger a slowdown or even a recession.

Yet even at this point in the trend, some AI stocks remain largely overlooked by investors. Here are two that could deliver market-beating results from here.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Sweetgreen

Sweetgreen (NYSE: SG) 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 Amplitude (NASDAQ: AMPL).

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 and Adobe Analytics.

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.

Should you invest $1,000 in Sweetgreen right now?

Before you buy stock in Sweetgreen, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Sweetgreen wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $670,781!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,023,752!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,052% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 185% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of August 25, 2025

Jeremy Bowman has positions in Nvidia and Sweetgreen. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Adobe, Alphabet, Nvidia, and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends Sweetgreen. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.