Palantir Technologies ( PLTR 3.92%) has been one of the hottest stocks on the market in 2024, logging amazing gains of 319% as of this writing. The company's artificial intelligence (AI) software platform has been in terrific demand from customers and governments looking to integrate generative AI into their data analysis.

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been one of the best performing stocks over the past few years, a run that catapulted it into the world's most valuable company. Many Wall Street analysts think the best is yet to come for this crucial supplier of chips to power artificial intelligence (AI).

In 2023, it ended up being Nvidia. This shift from AI hardware to AI application software was predictable because it has to be deployed and become useful at some time for all of the investment dollars in hardware to pay off.

The custom AI chipmaker's stock has surged in 2024, but its valuation is still reasonable.