Agentic AI has become one of the market’s fastest-moving themes, making it harder to separate genuine enterprise adoption from expectations already embedded in stock prices.
The stronger setups are companies showing that AI agents can translate into product adoption, recurring revenue, or a broader platform advantage.
ServiceNow, UiPath, and Palo Alto Networks approach agentic AI from different directions, giving investors three ways to assess whether the fundamentals can support the enthusiasm.
MarketBeat previews the top five stocks to own by October 1st.
The market frequently misprices the gap between what a company is actually building and what investors think it's building. Nowhere is that gap wider right now than in agentic artificial intelligence (AI). This refers to software that doesn't just answer questions but takes actions and makes decisions, all while operating with minimal human input.
The growth of agentic AI has happened fast, arguably faster than the fundamentals of the companies building out the technology. That means some names are being bid up on hype while others with real infrastructure and real revenue get lumped into the same "overextended" story.
Those stocks with strong fundamentals to support their growth are where the opportunity lies. These companies have agentic AI exposure backed by actual product traction, enterprise adoption, or platform advantages that hold up once the noise clears.
While it’s fair to say that some of these stocks don’t come cheap, they all have durable moats wide enough to survive the current volatility, which won’t be going away anytime soon.
ServiceNow: A Major Endorsement Is the Tailwind
The stock also got a boost from NVIDIA NASDAQ: NVDA chief executive officer (CEO), Jensen Huang, who called the company’s Now Platform the "platform destined to be the best platform, the operating system of enterprise AI agents.”
That’s the agentic AI argument in a nutshell. The company validated that growth in its Q2 report. ServiceNow reported customer adoption of agentic AI grew 9x over the prior nine months. It also reported that first-time AI buyers were up more than 45% year over year.
ServiceNow also announced an expanded partnership with Anthropic to integrate the latter’s Claude models deeper into its AI platforms.
UiPath: The Stock Wall Street Is Still Discovering
But investors have been fading PATH stock, which is down over 15% in 2026. That is, until recently. PATH stock is up more than 31% in the last three months. In the middle of that period was the company’s Q2 earnings report for its 2027 fiscal year (FY2027).
In that report, UiPath delivered revenue of $410.3 million, up 13% year-over-year, along with its fourth straight quarter of GAAP profitability. Maestro, its agentic orchestration layer, is doing exactly what the bears said wouldn't happen. That is, it helped land recognition as a Forrester Wave leader and drove a real acceleration in enterprise deal activity.
Analysts still have a consensus Hold rating on PATH. However, price targets have been increasing since the earnings report. The UiPath analyst forecasts on MarketBeat have a consensus price target of $16.75, implying an upside of over 21%.
Palo Alto Networks: The Definition of an Essential AI Stock
That's a key reason PANW is up approximately 25% in the last three months. Demand for the company’s product platform was evident in its Q4 earnings report for its FY2026.
Support for sustained future growth came from a statement by Palo Alto's chief executive officer (CEO), Nikesh Arora. He forecast that enterprises would need to spend at least $1 trillion to update aging cybersecurity infrastructure to handle attacks moving at machine speed.
To be fair, there are several other cybersecurity names that investors could choose from. CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: CRWD) and Okta NASDAQ: OKTA are two names that also reported blockbuster earnings reports. That said, Palo Alto is among the best in class and offers investors a set-it-and-forget-it option in the sector.
Why Owning These Stocks Rewards Patience
None of these three companies needs a perfect quarter to work. They need the market to keep noticing what's already showing up in the numbers. That's the setup long-term holders want. That is, real execution that is still catching up to investor belief.
That gap is exactly where this strategy pays off. Buying before consensus catches up means tolerating volatility while the story is still being contested on trading desks. But for investors willing to hold through the noise, the reward isn't a single earnings pop—it's owning the re-rating itself, as skepticism slowly gives way to the numbers already on the page.
Should You Invest $1,000 in ServiceNow Right Now?
Before you consider ServiceNow, you'll want to hear this.
MarketBeat keeps track of Wall Street's top-rated and best performing research analysts and the stocks they recommend to their clients on a daily basis. MarketBeat has identified the five stocks that top analysts are quietly whispering to their clients to buy now before the broader market catches on... and ServiceNow wasn't on the list.
While ServiceNow currently has a Moderate Buy rating among analysts, top-rated analysts believe these five stocks are better buys.
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