Over the past few years, many growth-oriented investors with a high tolerance for risk have pivoted toward the cryptocurrency market. Several of the top tokens -- like Bitcoin (BTC +1.07%) and Ether (ETH +1.61%) -- generated impressive gains within a short time. However, many of the smaller altcoins and meme coins fizzled out during the last crypto winter.
Instead of chasing those volatile tokens, which are usually driven by supply and demand, it might be smarter to invest in the market's more speculative artificial intelligence (AI) plays. Let's take a look at three of those promising tech stocks -- SoundHound AI (SOUN 4.11%), Lemonade (LMND 2.42%), and CoreWeave (CRWV 2.71%) -- and see why they could have more growth potential than the market's hottest cryptocurrencies.
Image source: Getty Images.
SoundHound AI
SoundHound AI develops AI-powered voice and audio recognition tools. Its namesake app can identify songs by hearing just a few seconds of recorded audio or a few hummed bars. However, it generates most of its revenue and growth from Houndify, its developer-oriented platform for creating customized voice recognition apps for a wide range of industries.
NASDAQ: SOUN
Key Data Points
SoundHound has been acquiring smaller companies to expand its presence in the restaurant and customer service chatbot markets. It already serves automakers like Stellantis, restaurants like Chipotle, and credit card giants like Mastercard, and it should attract more customers who want to develop their own voice recognition services without sharing their data with larger tech companies.
From 2025 to 2027, analysts expect SoundHound's revenue to grow at a 30% CAGR, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) turning positive in the final year. With an enterprise value of $4.5 billion, it might seem pricey at 20 times this year's sales. However, its early mover's advantage in the growing voice recognition services market should justify that higher valuation. Over the next decade, it should continue to expand and evolve as it acquires more companies and rolls out more agentic AI tools.
Lemonade
Lemonade sells homeowners, renters, term life, pet, and auto insurance policies. It's popular with younger and first-time insurance customers because it simplifies the byzantine buying process with a streamlined AI-powered app.
Using AI chatbots instead of human representatives can quickly onboard new customers and process claims in a few seconds. From the end of 2020 to the third quarter of 2025, its customer base nearly tripled from 1.00 million to 2.87 million.
NYSE: LMND
Key Data Points
From 2025 to 2027, analysts expect Lemonade's revenue and adjusted EBITDA to grow at a CAGR of 44%, with adjusted EBITDA turning positive in the final year. The expansion of its newer pet and auto insurance businesses, its overseas growth (especially in Europe), and its rollout of more AI features should drive those gains.
With an enterprise value of $6.2 billion, Lemonade still looks reasonably valued at five times this year's sales. However, it could command a much higher valuation if it scales up its business and pulls millions of customers away from traditional insurance companies.
CoreWeave
CoreWeave was once an Ethereum miner, but it abandoned that business model after the 2018 cryptocurrency crash. It subsequently repurposed its mining GPUs to remotely process machine learning and AI tasks, acquired more than 250,000 high-end data center GPUs from Nvidia, and expanded its business from three data centers at the end of 2022 to 33 data centers today.
NASDAQ: CRWV
Key Data Points
CoreWeave claims its dedicated cloud-based GPUs can process AI tasks 35 times faster and 80% more cost-effectively than other cloud infrastructure platforms. Those strengths make it a popular choice for companies which don't want to expand their own infrastructure to support their latest AI applications. As it locks in more AI customers -- including Microsoft and OpenAI -- analysts expect its revenue and adjusted EBITDA to grow at a CAGR of 95% and 109%, respectively, from 2025 to 2027.
CoreWeave is growing like a weed, yet it has an enterprise value of only $87.9 billion -- which equates to 7x this year's sales and 11x adjusted EBITDA. The high costs of opening new data centers are likely compressing its near-term valuations, but it could have plenty of room to grow over the long term as the cloud and AI markets expand.
