For the past few years, "AI stock" has been shorthand for one thing: semiconductors. The companies designing and manufacturing the chips that train and run large models became the default way for investors to buy exposure to the boom.
That framing may be narrowing. In a piece surfaced through Google News, the investing site simplywall.st points readers toward AI stocks to watch beyond chips, naming three software companies specifically: Appian, Datadog and Dynatrace.
The common thread among them is that none of them make hardware. Appian sells software for automating business workflows. Datadog and Dynatrace both operate in observability — tools that monitor how software systems are performing and flag problems when they aren't. All three sit at the layer where AI gets deployed and managed rather than the layer where it gets computed.
A note on what this source does and doesn't establish: it is a watchlist article, not a market report. The item available here carries no share prices, earnings figures, analyst ratings or performance data, and no forecast about whether these particular companies will benefit. It signals where attention is being directed, not what returns will follow.
Why it matters: if the market's definition of an "AI company" widens from the firms selling the picks and shovels to the firms selling the software that runs on top, that reshapes which businesses get credit — and capital — for the AI build-out. Ordinary investors holding tech funds may already own more of that second group than they realize.