Nvidia & Beyond: I/O Fund’s Best Free AI Stock Research in 2025  

We describe our newsletter as “free,” however the resources required to produce the research behind our weekly analysis are substantial. Delivering early, actionable insights consistently—and making them available to the public—is a deliberate investment by our firm and an approach that remains uncommon in traditional Wall Street research.  

While we occasionally highlight individual examples to illustrate accuracy, the broader value becomes clearer when viewed over a full year. Across that period, many of our articles identified complex market inflection points and highlighted companies early in their cycles—long before their performance became evident by a mainstream investor audience. 

For example, we offered immense benefit by preparing our readers for a local top in AI stocks in February, ahead of the April rout (reference articles below). Although the value of this has passed, our work in Q2-Q4 has only strengthened our strong 5-year track record. More recently, in Q3, the I/O Fund nailed the Bitcoin top at a time when virtually nobody else was calling it (quite the opposite; we literally challenged “the herd” in our article headline) —this materialized to become an accurate view that continues to play out as soft price action in crypto persists. Given the volatility of this asset class, the value in timing a selloff cannot be overstated.  

A few weeks ago, our Q4 series on the AI Monetization Wave defended the AI opportunity by stating the era of monetization has not yet begun; an argument in sharp opposition to growing AI bubble fears. To help illustrate this, we point toward some companies that are quietly monetizing AI into the tens of billions – which is by far, the fastest growth curve the technology industry has ever seen in a 2-3 year time span. Interesting enough, the mainstream narrative is not able to recognize this. 

These points, and many more like it, uniquely came from the I/O Fund – and we openly shared them with our readers in 2025. Below, we break down quarter-by-quarter the research we provided to our readers this past year - for free - including some critical research we believe is fully in play as we position for 2026.  

I/O Fund’s AI Stock Forecast in Q1 2025: NVDA, SMH & QQQ Sell-off 

Predicting the 2025 AI Correction: How the I/O Fund Identified the Peak 

The I/O Fund has built its reputation on identifying major market trends before they materialize. In the February feature, ‘AI Stocks Signal a Correction Before a Buying Opportunity Emerges’ Co-Portfolio Manager Knox Ridley warned of rising volatility for 2025. He noted that the market rally lacked broad support, creating a risky divergence in which stocks trend higher even as key sectors fail to reach new highs.  

For the I/O Fund, this served as a vital cautionary signal in an overheating market – especially given that the I/O Fund is a leading AI stock portfolio. Two months later, AI stocks sold off heavily with Nvidia stock down (25%), while VanEck Semiconductor ETF was down (22%), and Invesco QQQ ETF was down (17%) in a little over a month after we published the cautionary analysis.

Source:YCharts 

NVDA, SMH, and QQQ Performance: Visualizing the (25%) Nvidia drawdown after I/O Fund’s AI market peak warning 

I/O Fund’s Nvidia Strategy: Navigating DeepSeek & Blackwell Delays  

The I/O Fund closely tracks the supply chain data and monitors the technical levels of stocks to help our premium members make informed decisions. Despite Beth Kindig being a well-established Nvidia bull, her firm took a balanced approach headed into 2025 with yet another warning that the AI leader was likely to trade meaningfully lower due to technical signals. The analysis ‘Where I Plan To Buy Nvidia Stock Next’ provided a buy plan for our readers and stated that Nvidia could trade below $100. The analysis played out, as we were able to buy Nvidia at $87.99, issuing a real-time trade alert that has returned 92% on that tranche since early April. 

Most importantly we continued our coverage during the market sell-off caused by DeepSeek fears in our article, ‘DeepSeek Creates Buying Opportunity for Nvidia Stock.’ We reassured our readers that DeepSeek’s cost-efficient AI training is a long-term catalyst for Nvidia stock. We stated, “If DeepSeek’s breakthroughs are truly the key to ushering in a new paradigm of AI training and ultimately AI democratization from cost reductions, it will not be a death sentence for Nvidia; in fact, quite the opposite.” Despite many stating that DeepSeek was a defining moment for AI, and stirring up the panic, the Chinese LLM is hardly spoken of today.

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In Q1, a few Nvidia suppliers were providing mixed guidance on the timing of Nvidia’s Blackwell GB200 systems. We published an article, ‘Nvidia Suppliers Send Mixed Signals for Delays on GB200 Systems – What It Means for NVDA Stock’, to help Nvidia investors understand the changes in the supplier commentaries and why Nvidia was likely to take a pause Q1-Q2. Later, we identified Q3 as the likely inflection point for Nvidia, which later became the strongest earnings report in nearly two years. 

I/O Fund has a history of buying Nvidia at low prices. The first entry was $3.15 in December 2018, and since then, we have been able to issue buy alerts around major lows – including $10.85 on October 13th, 2022, as well as $94.48 on April 4th, 2025, and again at $87.99 on April 7th, 2025. The I/O Fund discusses key technical levels in our weekly webinars for Advanced Market Signals Tier members.  

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Q2: Navigating the AI Stock Recovery After the April Bottom 

The I/O Fund Logged 23 buys in March and April of 2025, Including NVDA and ALAB 

After the April bottom, AI stocks came roaring back with a vengeance. In tech investing, timing is the difference between average and extraordinary returns. For example, if an investor bought Astera Labs at the beginning of the year, the return would be only 27% compared to buying the stock at the beginning of April would have a staggering gain of 269% (as of today), a difference of 242% within a short period of one quarter. This is exactly what the I/O Fund did, adding to current positions like Nvidia, while also building new positions in four additional lesser-known AI stocks with strong outperformance. 

Going back to Astera Labs, we knew that we wanted to own ALAB; however, our system was telling us that we should wait, as the odds were high heading into 2025 that we could get lower prices. We began to layer in at $79.73 on January 27th, when ALAB was more than 45% off its highs. We further issued 4 additional buy alerts, layering in at key levels, completing our accumulation at $51.10 on April 4th. Our system of using technical analysis to layer into a position gave us an 11% position in ALAB with a combined cost basis of $69.55, which made it one of our biggest winners of the year, with a 148% return in 2025.  

Source: I/O Fund 

Astera Labs (ALAB) Stock Performance: 269% Gains Following the April Bottom compare this to 27% return YTD in 2025. 

I/O Fund’s Co-Portfolio Manager Knox Ridley discussed in May that his analysis foresaw the S&P 500 index reaching a new all-time high later in the year in the article, ‘Historic Market Uncertainty Meets $7 Trillion Debt Wall: What Comes Next for the S&P 500.’ Knox utilized a data-driven approach by identifying a bullish shift in the Advance-Decline line –signalling healthy market breadth. He also leveraged Fibonacci levels to gauge the strength of the recovery and along with that, used better-than-expected earnings signals to predict an all-time high later in 2025. Fast forward to December 2025, and Knox’s forecast has become reality as the S&P 500 officially surged to its new all-time high. 

AMD Outperformed Nvidia in 2025 

In June, AMD offered more details on the release of their groundbreaking GPUs with little fanfare in the markets – which is par for the course as AMD has a history of being forgotten about until the company can no longer be ignored. In the analysis, ‘AMD vs Nvidia: The AI Stock That Could Win by 2028,’ we offered our readers a timely discussion on AMD's strengths and how thinking AMD is down for the count could be a costly mistake. AMD stock is up 68% compared to Nvidia’s return of 31% during this period, a difference of 37%.  

Source: YCharts 

Visualizing AMD’s 37% Outperformance Over Nvidia Post-I/O Fund June Analysis 

Broadcom’s Silent Rise: Building the Backbone of AI Inference 

While everyone is focused on the Nvidia stock, Broadcom is quietly cementing its position for the second spot. The company specializes in custom silicon and networking required for the next phase of AI, particularly for the inference trend. Broadcom’s custom XPU solutions provides Big Tech something that AI GPUs can’t: massive cost savings and energy efficiency at scale. We have discussed in depth in our article, ‘This AI Stock is Set to Surge from Inference Demand.’ 

Q3 Market Bifurcation: AI Leadership Emerges as Crypto Stalls 

April proved challenging, but Q3 marked a critical bifurcation in the market. As crypto rolled over and many debt-laden AI stocks softened, a select group of lesser-known AI names continued to advance—quietly separating leadership from excess. 

Crypto Peaked in Q3 as the Herd Stayed Bullish 

The I/O Fund has long held that risk management should carry equal weight to alpha generation. As a result, some of our most important wins are not always reflected in returns, but in losses avoided. In August, we hosted a rare, public one-hour webinar—our only free webinar of the year—to walk through why a Bitcoin selloff was increasingly likely. At the time, Co-Portfolio Manager Knox Ridley was confident enough in his analysis to openly challenge lofty crypto price targets, referring to consensus optimism as “the herd.” 

Our Bitcoin calls are grounded in a systematic framework that combines technical analysis, on-chain data, and global liquidity trends. While many money managers were calling for Bitcoin prices to double in August, Knox accurately identified a market top through a series of research pieces, including the article ‘Is Bitcoin’s Bull Run Nearing a Top? What the Herd Missed at $16,000 and is Missing Now’as well as the accompanying webinar. 

The clip below is from our Free Bitcoin Webinar in August, explaining that we were in the final Wave 5 for Bitcoin.

Avoiding the AI Bubble Trap: I/O Fund’s Timely Nvidia Q3 Call 

While others were busy discussing the AI bubble, we continued to track Big Tech Capex to predict Nvidia’s strong Q3 results. Nvidia’s stock experienced a rare price target reduction after reporting weaker-than-expected Q2 results and increased competition from Broadcom. The company faced numerous headwinds from China and production delays in their current generation of GPUs during that period. We stayed calm and crunched the hard data on Q2 capex numbers and what is coming down the pipe for Q3. We also came up with an updated buy plan to our readers in the article that we published in September, ‘Updated Nvidia Stock Price Target - AI “Bubble” Narrative Ignores Re-Acceleration in Big Tech Capex.’ 

Reddit Stock, an Overlooked AI Play 

During this quarter, the I/O Fund covered Reddit, ahead of the stock leading off the November lows in the article Reddit Stock Blows the Doors Off - Can it Last? We discussed Reddit’s strong Q2 earnings and even issued three buy alerts between $190 - $196. Despite having far fewer users than Facebook, Reddit ranks among the most visited U.S websites, benefiting significantly from Google’s AI-driven search changes. This visibility has fueled growth but also introduces risk. The analysis explores how investors can evaluate this opportunity and identify the signs of peak growth and recognize potential catalysts that could further influence Reddit’s stock.  

Q4: The I/O Fund’s AI Monetization Calls 

While many investors are wondering whether the AI trend is entering dot-com territory, we believe AI’s most powerful move has not even begun.  

In a series of analyses on the incoming AI monetization wave, the I/O Fund has laid out a data-driven case that AI is on the cusp of monetizing; a sharp rebuttal to those who believe AI is topping. Earlier this month, we connected the dots on Nvidia’s earnings report, the strongest in nearly two years, and highlighted why Broadcom’s commentary is quietly signaling that the best is yet to come. 

At select moments, IOF takes a firm view that diverges sharply from prevailing market consensus. In many of these instances, we are among the few—if not the only—voices expressing that view in real time, grounded in deep analysis and conviction. 

We did this recently by standing against the prevailing, negative views on Big Tech capex by pointing out we are likely on the cusp of an AI monetization wave  

Predicting Nvidia’s $20 Trillion Market Cap: The 2030 Roadmap 

We revised our $10 trillion market cap target to $20 trillion in the article here. We offered a data-driven, fundamentally grounded case for how Nvidia can realistically reach a $20 trillion valuation by 2030. This is supported by Nvidia’s aggressive 1-year product roadmap, an impenetrable software ecosystem through CUDA to maintain a near-monopoly on training, and its evolution into a full-stack AI systems provider as the inference market intensifies. When these elements are modeled together — alongside the rapid expansion in global AI infrastructure capex — the path to $20 trillion becomes less sensational and more a reflection of compounding fundamentals. Under our framework, Nvidia’s data center segment would need to grow at a 36% CAGR through 2030 to support such a market capitalization—a trajectory we view as achievable given the company’s roadmap visibility.  Our CEO and Lead Tech Analyst, Beth Kindig, joined Charles Payne of Fox Business Network on his show ‘Making Money with Charles Payne’, after Nvidia’s stellar Q3 results to defend the $20 trillion market cap target. 

AI Growth Cycle: Decoding Big Tech’s Record CapEx 

Big Tech’s capital spending, the core metric for the AI cycle, continued to impress in the Q3 earnings season. Q3 CapEx rose 19% QoQ and 75% YoY - which is the strongest growth we've seen this year. Amazon’s Andy Jassy captured the sentiment on his Q3 earnings call: “The faster we grow, the more CapEx we end up spending… We don’t procure it unless we see significant signals of demand.” His comments underscore the durability of AI-driven demand.  

Some high-profile analyst firms claim the CapEx boom is a one-time event – and we wrote a data-driven rebuttal to this idea in the article Big Tech’s $405B Bet: Why AI Stocks Are Set Up for a Strong 2026. AI infrastructure is continuously advancing, and this requires successive generations of hardware and networking upgrades every one to two years as model architectures, memory bandwidth, and power requirements scale exponentially. 

The Incoming AI Monetization Wave 

In the analysis, ‘The AI Revenue Leader Nobody Is Talking About—Second Only to Nvidia Stock.’ We highlight several key metrics from Meta’s Q3 earnings report that illustrate the company is offering measurable returns on its AI investments. Perhaps most surprising, we believe Meta may now rank only behind Nvidia in AI revenue — surpassing Microsoft in the process. The analysis looks beyond the headline numbers to examine what’s driving AI’s second-largest revenue engine. 

This quarter, our firm also covered Micron, a stock up 6X compared to Nvidia this year in the article Micron Stock Up 120% YTD: What the HBM Memory Leader Plans for 2026. Micron is no longer tied to consumer device cycles. Instead, high bandwidth memory (HBM) had led to higher margins and multi-year supplier agreements, resulting in a leveraged approach to participate in the AI infrastructure buildout. 

Conclusion: 

While the rest of the market spent this year debating AI bubbles, geopolitical fears, and supply chain bottlenecks, our team remained laser-focused on outcomes. Rather than responding to headlines, we work hard to anticipate shifts and publish data-driven analysis to get in front of the market. This approach led us to flag the April correction in February, surface multiple AI winners throughout the year, and help protect capital during the crypto downturn.  

Over the past five years, the I/O Fund has delivered cumulative returns of 210%—performance that would rank us #5 among hedge funds and #2 among ETFs. Notably, this figure does not yet reflect our strong 2025 performance. 

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Please note: The I/O Fund conducts research and draws conclusions for the Fund’s positions. We then share that information with our readers. This is not a guarantee of a stock’s performance. Please consult your personal financial advisor before buying any stock in the companies mentioned in this analysis.

Recommended Reading:

• AI Stocks & Nvidia: I/O Fund’s 2025 Tech Media Highlights
• The AI Revenue Leader Nobody Is Talking About—Second Only to Nvidia Stock
• Broadcom Stock: The Silent Winner in the AI Monetization Supercycle
• Nvidia Stock and the AI Monetization Supercycle No One Is Pricing In