The Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) Growth Stocks After the Helium Shock Are the Ones That Don't Need the Strait of Hormuz

Datadog reported Q1 2026 revenue of $1.0 billion, up 32% year over year, with EPS of $0.60, free cash flow of $289 million, and raised full-year guidance; the stock jumped about 30% on the results. CrowdStrike also posted strong Q4 fiscal 2026 results, with ARR of $5.25 billion (+24%) and revenue of $1.31 billion (+23%), while guiding fiscal 2027 revenue to $5.86-$5.92 billion. The article argues that AI-driven software platforms like observability and cybersecurity are insulated from chip supply bottlenecks and benefit as AI adoption expands.

Analysis

The second-order read is that AI capex is bifurcating into hardware-constrained and software-scaling layers, and the market is increasingly paying up for the latter because it monetizes complexity rather than silicon throughput. That matters because every incremental AI workload creates disproportionate telemetry, policy, and incident-response demand; observability and security become tax collectors on AI adoption. DDOG looks like the cleaner beneficiary because its AI monitoring exposure is still early, while CRWD is more mature and therefore more dependent on proving reacceleration rather than simply benefiting from the trend.

The biggest hidden winner may be the broader ecosystem of enterprise cloud operators and systems integrators that get pulled into the same wave, but the article suggests software vendors with usage-linked pricing can re-rate fastest when AI workloads move from pilot to production. The supply-chain framing also implicitly supports names tied to operational risk management: when physical bottlenecks make production less predictable, CIOs spend more on resilience, visibility, and threat detection. That should help budget allocation toward platform vendors even if IT spend overall remains disciplined.

The market risk is that the initial reaction has already priced in too much of the near-term upside in DDOG, while CRWD still faces a longer trust-repair cycle after its prior incident. If AI deployments slip from hype into optimization mode over the next 1-2 quarters, observability spend can decelerate before security spend does, because monitoring is often bought first and normalized later. The contrarian miss is that the lack of physical supply-chain exposure is not a pure advantage if customer growth is concentrated in a narrow cohort of AI-heavy enterprises; any pause in that cohort's capex could hit both names simultaneously.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Buy DDOG on a pullback over the next 2-4 weeks; use the post-earnings strength to wait for a 5-8% retracement, then target a 3-6 month move back toward premium multiples if AI monitoring revenue proves durable.
• Own CRWD only on relative weakness vs. DDOG; prefer a pair trade long DDOG / short CRWD into the next 1-2 quarters, because DDOG has cleaner incremental AI monetization while CRWD still carries incident-related trust overhang.
• Sell near-dated CRWD calls against a core long if already held; implied volatility should stay elevated, and the recovery story is likely to be grindy rather than linear over the next 90 days.
• Consider a long DDOG / long MCO basket as a quality-risk-management proxy for the next 6 months; both monetize enterprise uncertainty, but DDOG has a cleaner AI upside catalyst while MCO offers defensive diversification.
• Avoid chasing the move in both names after the headline quarter; the asymmetry is better in waiting for consolidation than paying peak sentiment after a one-day rerating.