6 Stock Picks Analysts Say Will Gain When AI Panic Fades

AI has gone from Wall Street’s favorite trade to bearish catalyst in short order, but not everyone on Wall Street is convinced the panic is warranted.

After a viral note from Citrini Research painting a grim picture of a future shaped by AI tanked the market on Monday, Jefferies analysts wrote on Tuesday that they see the ongoing sell-off as unjustified.

Internet stocks have been among the hardest hit, with the S&P Internet Select Industry Index down more than 15% since the start of 2026. While sentiment is negative, Jefferies said that they see the tech subsector as insulated from the panic, and flagged six stocks in particular that are positioned to break out once Wall Street stops erupting in panic with every new AI update.

“We see two major obstacles to Internet disintermediation: (1) platforms would need to willingly provide the underlying service/ supply for the LLMs; (2) consumer behavior would need to change,” they wrote.

Jefferies explained that they see AI as a potential tailwind for consumer internet stocks, with AI powering better recommendation engines, reduced customer service costs, and improved product velocity, but it will take time for Wall Street to see this perspective.

“We recommend owning names the market is likely to identify as possessing structural barriers to AI disintermediation, which are likely to outperform first once sentiment improves.”

Here are six stocks that Jefferies says fit this playbook and quotes from management the analysts say demonstrate the company’s ability to weather disruption.

Airbnb

Airbnb stock is down 7% this year.

CEO Brian Chesky said during the company’s most recent earnings call that integrating AI into the company’s offerings will create a customer experience that is “impossible to replicate.”

“A chatbot can give you a list of homes, but it can’t give you the unique ones you find on Airbnb. A chatbot doesn’t have our 200 million verified identities or our 500 million proprietary reviews, and it can’t message the hosts, which 90% of our guests do. It can’t provide global payment processing, customer support, or insurance,” he added.

Carvana

Carvana stock has lost 22% in 2026, but Jefferies sees a handful of signs it’s in a good spot amid the AI-induced rotation.

CEO Ernie Garcia III highlighted the financing, logistics, and reconditioning parts of the business as protected from AI in the near term.

“We think that competitively we’re incredibly well positioned compared to the rest of our industry. And we think that our business itself is also positioned, to be an AI winner and not something that is disrupted by AI,” Garcia said on Carvana’s earnings call.

Doordash

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu says that DoorDash is well-positioned despite AI replacement worries.

On DoorDash’s recent earnings call, the CEO said, “I think DoorDash is really well-positioned because we’re actually solving the end-to-end job for a customer, which is to get them some item brought to them in the condition they expect on time every time. That’s actually really hard to do. You got to map the physical world, all of which — that information does not exist anywhere on the internet. That’s data that DoorDash has to collect in a proprietary way…So the end-to-end job at the end of the day, I think is how customers will ultimately judge where they do their shopping.”

The stock is down 28% year to date.

Disney

Disney stock has declined more than 7% since the start of 2026.

The media giant recently announced a deal with OpenAI’s Sora, which CEO Bob Iger says will allow the company to better curate short-form video for their streaming services.

Iger told investors, “We view AI as having a number of obviously possible advantages or opportunities for the company. One is as a tool to help the creative process, so creativity. Another is productivity, which is simply being more efficient. And the third I’ll call connectivity, which is creating basically a more intimate relationship with the consumer, enabling the consumer and enabling us with the consumer just to have a more engaged more effective relationship.”

Roku

Jefferies analysts highlighted comments from Roku CEO Anthony Wood that outline his view that AI is “very positive” for the company.

“We view it as a powerful tailwind to our business. It’s not a disruptor for us and we’re integrating it across our entire technology stack. We’re applying AI across our platform to improve discovery, increase engagement and unlock major new monetization opportunities,” the CEO said.

Roku stock has fallen 22% in 2026.

Spotify

Spotify stock is down 20% year to date.

Spotify’s co-CEO Gustav Söderström said, “Significant disruption happens when new technologies enable new asymmetric business models. For example, this is what Spotify did to music downloads. This is what Uber did to taxi service. But the question everyone should be asking is does this evolution create new business models or are we mostly just seeing new technologies?”

The executive added AI disruption fears for software are “reasonable,” but that the consumer space is better insulated since its business model relies on ads and subscriptions.