3 Growth Stocks to Buy Now, According to Our AI Score (June 2026)

By AltIndex Research · 10 min read · June 18, 4:44 pm

Three stocks on our buy list right now tell three different growth stories. One sells the picks and shovels of the AI boom. One is a pure bet on data center construction that just turned its first profit. One is a quiet insurance compounder the market has left for dead despite record earnings. All three carry a high AI Score, and the alternative data explains why.

The AI Score is our composite signal. It blends fundamentals, hiring data, web and social audience trends, and customer activity into a single 0 to 100 number, where anything above 60 is a buy signal. We screened our universe for the highest scores and found three stocks with a clear, data-backed reason to keep climbing from here. Let's take a closer look.

Amphenol: the company quietly wiring the AI boom

Most investors chasing AI exposure crowd into the chip designers. Amphenol (APH) makes the connectors, cables, and high-speed interconnects that move data between those chips, and the demand has become extraordinary. Revenue last quarter hit $7.62 billion, up 58% from the same quarter a year earlier. That is impressive for a 92-year-old industrial company.

The earnings trajectory is the cleanest growth story of the three stocks in this article. Quarterly EPS has climbed for eight straight quarters, from $0.44 in mid-2024 to $1.06 in the most recent report, and the company beat estimates every single time. EBITDA grew 82% year over year. The connector business has been repriced by the market as an AI infrastructure play, and the company leaned into it, announcing a 5% price increase on connectors taking effect in July 2026.

The hiring data tells you the growth is not slowing. Amphenol's headcount has climbed every month for a year, from roughly 4,640 employees last summer to 5,447 today, a steady 17% increase with no pullback even through the winter. Our employee count data shows a company building capacity, not coasting, and job postings have started accelerating again into the summer. Companies do not staff up like that unless order books are full.

Amphenol (APH) employee count, July 2025 to June 2026

Our AI Score for Amphenol was elevated through the back half of 2025 as the fundamentals accelerated, and the score sits at 81 today. Recent headlines reinforce the demand picture. Active optical cable, the kind of interconnect Amphenol sells into AI data centers, is forecast to grow from $3.6 billion in 2024 to $7.8 billion by 2030, and the company is raising prices on selected products by 5% starting July. Pricing power like that, in the middle of a demand surge, is what separates a cyclical industrial from a growth compounder.

AltIndex AI Score vs. Price, June 2025 to June 2026

The one thing keeping this from being a flawless pick is valuation. At a P/E of 45.6, a lot of the growth is already priced in, and CEO Richard Norwitt sold roughly 130,000 shares across early May, visible in our insider transactions data. The growth is real, but you are paying up for it.

Applied Digital: the data center bet that just turned profitable

Applied Digital (APLD) is the highest-risk, highest-momentum name on this list. The stock is up 95% over the past six months and 339% over the past year, and it builds and operates the data centers that AI companies rent to train and run their models. For most of its life as a public company it lost money on every quarter. But that just changed.

In the quarter ending February 2026, Applied Digital reported revenue of $127 million, more than triple the $38 million it posted a year earlier, and EPS of $0.09 against an expected loss of $0.21. That is the first positive earnings surprise in the company's history as a data center operator, and it beat the estimate by a wide margin. Revenue has roughly doubled in two quarters as new capacity came online.

The alternative data shows that growth in real time. Applied Digital's headcount (sourced from LinkedIn data) jumped from 155 employees last summer to 229 today, a 48% increase, and the hiring accelerated through exactly the months revenue turned profitable. Job postings tell the same story, climbing from low single digits a year ago to a peak above 38 this spring as the company staffed up new sites. When a small operator scales its workforce by nearly half in a year, it is bringing capacity online, and capacity is what this business sells.

The bull case is structural. The data center market keeps absorbing capital faster than operators can build, with one industry forecast projecting $116 billion in new US investment by 2031. Applied Digital is a small-cap operator levered directly to that buildout, which is why a $13 billion company can swing 5% in a day on data center headlines, making it an interesting stock to swing trade.

AltIndex AI Score vs. Price, June 2025 to June 2026

The risks here are not subtle. On a trailing basis the company is still unprofitable, the balance sheet carries the debt load of a capital-intensive builder, and insiders including CEO Wes Cummins have been steady sellers into the rally. In June the company spun out its ChronoScale AI infrastructure unit as an independent operator, a move that frees up capital for the core data center business but also removes an asset from the story. Our AI Score of 78 reflects exceptional customer momentum offset by a softer fundamental signal.

Palomar: record earnings, falling stock, widening gap

Palomar (PLMR) is the contrarian pick. It is a specialty insurer focused on catastrophe risk, earthquakes, floods, and other hard-to-price perils, and it is the only stock here whose price has gone the wrong way. Shares are down 12% over six months and 28% over the year. The earnings tell the opposite story.

Palomar has grown EPS every quarter for two straight years, from $1.25 in mid-2024 to $2.31 in the most recent quarter. Revenue rose 60% year over year to $279 million, and the company has beaten earnings estimates eight quarters running, often by double digits. This is the steadiest fundamental growth on the list, and the stock trades at a P/E of 15.9, less than half Amphenol's multiple.

The headcount data confirms the business is expanding, not defending. Palomar grew from 338 employees last summer to 423 today, a 25% increase, with a clear step up in the spring as it added underwriting capacity. A shrinking insurer cuts staff; a growing one hires ahead of the premium it expects to write. Our employee count data points firmly to the latter, and employee-reported business outlook has climbed by 6% in the last year.

The market is pricing in fear, not performance. Catastrophe insurers get punished when investors brace for a bad storm season, regardless of what the books say. That is the gap. The fundamentals are compounding while the share price contracts, which is exactly the kind of divergence that tends to resolve when a quarter of clean results reminds the market the business is working.

Palomar (PLMR) quarterly EPS, mid-2024 to Q1 2026

Our AI Score for Palomar sits at 80, driven by that fundamental strength and a strong hiring signal. But the risk is genuine and specific: a single major catastrophe event can wipe out a quarter of earnings for a company this size. That is the trade. You are buying record fundamentals at a discount because the market is afraid of weather.

Three stocks, three ways to grow a portfolio

These are three different routes to the same goal. Amphenol is the high-quality compounder for investors who want growth they can sleep on, accelerating earnings, real pricing power, and a business that gets stronger as AI spending climbs. Applied Digital is the high-risk, high-reward bet for investors who can stomach volatility in exchange for triple-digit upside if the data center buildout keeps running. Palomar is the value-priced grower for investors who want record fundamentals at a discount and are willing to wait for the market to notice.

What ties them together is that the growth is already showing up in the data, not just the forecasts. Headcount is climbing at all three, Amphenol's revenue is up 58%, employee business outlook is trending up, Applied Digital just turned its first profit, and Palomar has compounded earnings for eight straight quarters. Our AI Score flagged all three before these moves were obvious, and it sits at 78 or higher on each today. Track them on AltIndex, watch the same signals we used to find them, and you will see the next move forming while it is still early.

Sources: AltIndex AI Score, AltIndex job postings and employee count data, AltIndex quarterly financials and price history. Stock prices are historical and for informational purposes only. This article does not constitute investment advice.

Disclosure: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. AltIndex aggregates publicly available alternative data signals. Past signal performance does not guarantee future results. Always do your own due diligence before making investment decisions.