6 Penny Stocks to Buy Now According to Alternative Data

By AltIndex Research · 15 min read · July 8, 8:44 am

Penny stocks are where retail investors have the least information but potentially the most upside. So we did what we always do: we took a closer look at the data. We ran 20 of the most hyped stocks under $5 on our platform through our full alternative data stack, and six came out with buy-range AI Scores and at least one hard signal behind them: insider buying, hiring growth, revenue acceleration, or surging retail attention.

Below $5, price charts stop telling you much. There's limited analyst coverage, no institutional ownership to speak of, and half the moves are noise. What still tells the truth down here is alternative data, the digital footprints created by the companies in real-time. A CEO wiring $3.25 million of his own cash to buy shares at $4.00 is a signal. A brokerage adding 1,400 employees on LinkedIn while its stock loses half its value is a signal. A battery maker posting 39% more job openings while its shares sit at all-time lows is a signal. All three are happening right now, and all three are on this list.

This is exactly what we built our platform to catch. It flagged 20 stocks under $5 with unusually high hype scores this month, and we pushed every one of them through the same screen: a current AI Score of 60 or above, which is our buy signal range, plus at least one alternative data signal that a company can't manufacture with a press release.

Real Brokerage (REAX): The $2 Stock Buying RE/MAX

Real Brokerage trades at $2.15 with an AI Score of 66, the highest of any stock in our screen. It is also the strangest mispricing on this list. This is a company that generated $465.6 million in revenue last quarter, up 32% year over year, grew adjusted EBITDA 80% to $14.9 million, holds $62.9 million in cash with zero debt, and signed a definitive agreement in April to acquire RE/MAX Holdings at an implied enterprise value of $880 million. The combined entity would be called Real REMAX Group. A $482 million market cap company is absorbing one of the most recognizable brands in American real estate, and the stock still trades like a leftover SPAC.

The alternative data tells the same story as the earnings. Real is a cloud-based brokerage, so its product is the network of real estate agents who run their business on its platform, and every agent it recruits brings closed transactions and commission revenue with them. That network hit 33,510 agents in Q1, up 25% year over year, and crossed 33,900 by early May. Our LinkedIn headcount tracking shows the same curve from a different angle: LinkedIn-reported employees grew from 8,059 to 9,493 over the past twelve months, a 17.8% increase, while the stock lost roughly half its value over the same period. When headcount and revenue compound in one direction and the share price goes the other way, one of them is wrong. Our job postings data also shows Real hiring consistently through the drawdown, and its 90% employee business outlook rating is one of the strongest we track at any market cap. Even the recruiting funnel is visible in our web traffic data: onereal.com hit roughly 95,000 weekly visits in late April, a twelve-month high and up 43% month over month, more than double its October trough.

AltIndex LinkedIn employee data vs. price

The market's objection is real: gross margin is thin at 9.1% and compressing as more agents hit their commission caps, and GAAP profitability keeps slipping just out of reach. But the stock has started to move. REAX is up 27% over the past month, and our AI Score jumped back into buy territory in the same window. Analyst price targets range from $4 to $8 against a $2.15 share price.

ZenaTech (ZENA): A Defense Drone Play the Score Caught Climbing

ZenaTech is the cheapest stock on this list at $1.30 and the clearest example of why we track AI Score direction, not just its level. Ten weeks ago, ZENA scored a 50.5 on our platform, dead neutral. It has climbed almost every week since: 52 in late May, 58 in late June, and 65 today. A fifteen-point climb into buy territory while the stock sits near its 52-week low is the setup we built the score to find.

What's driving it is fundamental, not social. On June 30, ZenaTech reported that its Q1 2026 revenue of CAD $8.3 million puts the company at a CAD $33 million annualized run rate, and management called that a baseline rather than a ceiling, since several acquisitions closed mid-period and haven't contributed a full year yet. The company runs an acquisition-led Drone as a Service roll-up, and it is pushing hard into defense: on July 7 it unveiled the IQ Sphere prototype, a spherical drone built for autonomous inspection and reconnaissance in GPS-denied environments, and over the next three months it will exhibit at defense events including MSPO in Poland, one of Europe's largest defense exhibitions, alongside NATO delegations.

A $118 million market cap against a CAD $33 million and growing run rate, in a defense drone market where capital is pouring in, is a ratio that gets rerated fast once institutional buyers notice. The stock is down 66% over the past year, but our signals have been moving the other way: the AI Score added fifteen points in ten weeks, job postings doubled month over month, admittedly off a small base, and traffic to zenatech.com climbed roughly 65% between February and April, from about 26,700 to 44,000 weekly visits, a sign the company is drawing real customer and investor attention well before the share price reflects it.

Worksport (WKSP): The CEO Keeps Buying His Own Stock

Worksport is the smallest and riskiest name here, a $13 million market cap maker of solar and conventional tonneau covers for pickup trucks. What put it on this list is a signal we weight heavily at any size: pattern insider buying. CEO Steven Rossi has now bought stock in the open market three times, and each purchase came at a lower price than the last.

Date	Shares	Price	Approx. value
Nov 19, 2024	33,333	$0.75	$25,000
Apr 13, 2026	88,214	$0.85	$75,000
Jun 5, 2026	79,618	$0.63	$50,000

Roughly $150,000 across three purchases won't move a chart, but direction matters more than size at this market cap, and Rossi doubled down as the stock fell. In June, Benzinga reported that Worksport's leadership chose equity compensation over cash, which points the same way. The insider transaction record shows no open-market sales against these buys.

The fundamentals give the conviction something to stand on. Q1 2026 revenue came in at $3.3 million, up 48% from $2.2 million a year earlier, and that growth is what pushed the fundamental side of our model to one of the strongest readings in this screen. The AI Score sits at 65, and the stock is up 23% over the past month after losing more than 80% over the past year. Losses are still running at roughly $5.8 million a quarter against that $3.3 million in revenue, so dilution risk is the whole ballgame here. The CEO is betting his own money it resolves upward.

Digi Power X (DGXX): The AI Data Center Pivot Reddit Found First

Digi Power X is what happened when a blockchain infrastructure company decided its power assets were worth more feeding GPUs than mining coins. On May 15 it launched NeoCloudz, its GPU cloud business, and began generating its first AI revenue. On June 3 it committed $35 million to NVIDIA's next-generation Vera Rubin platform to expand that business. And on July 7 it set fiscal 2027 targets as its AI data center campus advances toward launch.

Our Reddit tracking caught the retail crowd converging on the story in real time: DGXX mentions ran at nearly 39 per week in mid-May, right as the NeoCloudz launch hit, and the stock more than doubled from a weekly average of $3.47 in late April to $7.94 by late May. It has since given a chunk of that back, trading at $4.25 today, but it is still up 56% over the past year, and our AI Score has kept climbing through the pullback, from 51 in early May to 64 now.

There is a real business under the narrative. Digi Power X posted a small positive net income of $302,791 in its September 2025 quarter, a rarity in this screen, though it swung back to a loss in the December quarter as it spent into the pivot. The divergence is the trade: the stock has fallen roughly 44% from its late-May weekly peak while our AI Score climbed from 51 to 64 over the same stretch. When retail attention leaves and the score keeps rising anyway, what's left driving it is fundamentals, not hype.

Rezolve AI (RZLV): The CEO Bought $3.25 Million at $4. The Stock Is at $2.61.

Rezolve AI is the largest company on this list at a $1.1 billion market cap, and it has the most aggressive growth numbers. Q1 2026 unaudited revenue came in around $60 million, which by itself exceeded the company's entire full-year 2025 revenue. Management has reaffirmed FY26 guidance of approximately $360 million, roughly 7.5 times last year, and expects to exit 2026 with at least $500 million in annual recurring revenue across more than 1,000 enterprise customers using its Brain Suite AI commerce platform.

Two hard signals back the growth story. First, on April 2, CEO Daniel Wagner bought 812,956 shares in the open market at $4.00, a purchase worth about $3.25 million. The stock now trades at $2.61, which means the CEO is underwater on a multi-million dollar personal bet and the entry price for anyone buying today is 35% below his. Second, on June 30 shareholders approved a buyback program of up to $300 million, with the required UK court approval expected by mid-September 2026. Against a $1.1 billion market cap, that authorization covers more than a quarter of the company.

AltIndex Reddit mentions data

Retail is starting to notice. Our Reddit tracking shows RZLV mentions tripling month over month to 22.5 per week as the buyback news landed, the highest reading since March. The AI Score sits at 61, held back mainly by a weak employment signal after the company cut job postings sharply, which is worth watching. But when a CEO buys millions at $4, guides to 7.5x revenue growth, and gets a $300 million buyback approved, the alternative data reads conviction, not distress.

Enovix (ENVX): Hiring Up 39% While the Stock Sits at All-Time Lows

Enovix is the most established company in this screen, a $1.17 billion silicon-anode battery maker with cells shipping into smart eyewear and smartphones in qualification. It is also the most beaten-down: the stock touched an all-time low of $4.62 in March, trades at $4.93 today, and is down 58% over the past year with a 52-week high of $16.49 in the rearview mirror.

Companies that are dying don't hire. Our job postings data shows Enovix listings up 38.7% year over year, averaging around 22 open roles per week now versus 16 a year ago, and the posting count has held firm through the entire share price collapse. LinkedIn headcount keeps ticking up, and the company's 76% employee rating suggests the people inside the building don't share the market's verdict.

AltIndex job postings data vs. price

Revenue backs up the hiring. Enovix grew quarterly revenue from $5.1 million in Q1 2025 to $11.3 million in Q4 2025, more than doubling over the year, with gross margin turning positive around 21.6% in the most recent quarter. Losses remain heavy at roughly $38 million a quarter, but the company holds over $500 million in cash and short-term investments, a runway most sub-$5 stocks can only dream about. Analyst consensus is a buy, with a median price target of $11.50 against today's $4.93, and our AI Score moved back to 61 this week. The main risk is timing: smartphone qualification delays could push large-scale commercialization to 2027, and the market has no patience left for this name. That impatience is the discount.

The six picks at a glance

What Could Go Wrong

Every stock on this list can lose you money quickly, and most of them have recently. Five of the six are unprofitable, and small caps that burn cash eventually sell shares to fund it, which is the single most reliable destroyer of penny stock returns. Worksport's $13 million market cap makes it acutely exposed to dilution. Rezolve's buyback still needs UK court approval and its revenue figures are unaudited. Real Brokerage's RE/MAX acquisition has to actually close, and its gross margins are compressing while it does. ZenaTech and Digi Power X both ride hot narratives, defense drones and AI data centers, and narrative stocks fall as fast as they rise when attention rotates. Position sizing matters more here than anywhere else in the market.

The fallback signal to watch across all six is hiring. Growing job postings and headcount are the cheapest confirmation that a company still plans to grow, and they are the first thing to roll over when it doesn't, usually a quarter or two before the income statement admits it. As long as Real keeps adding agents, Enovix keeps posting roles, and ZenaTech keeps expanding, the growth thesis holds. If those lines flatten, treat it as the data withdrawing its endorsement and move on.

The Bottom Line

Alternative data is what surfaces the potential in these six before the market prices it in. Every one clears a buy-range AI Score, and every one carries at least one signal that costs real money to fake: a CEO writing seven-figure checks, headcount compounding through a drawdown, revenue growing 7.5x, web traffic doubling. None of it guarantees the stock works, but it is the difference between a bet on a story and a bet on evidence. And because these setups change weekly, we keep a live version of this screen on our trending penny stocks on Reddit page, updated as the mentions and scores move.

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Sources: AltIndex AI Score data, AltIndex LinkedIn employee data, AltIndex job postings data, AltIndex Reddit mentions data, AltIndex web traffic data, AltIndex insider transaction data, company press releases and SEC filings, Q1 2026 earnings reports. 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.