Opendoor Technologies Inc. is throwing its weight behind artificial intelligence — much to the delight of investors in the e-commerce platform for residential property transactions, who have seen share prices skyrocket amid a frenzy of activity in recent weeks.

But some caution that buyers should beware, pointing to concerns that AI can’t do as much as for home buyers, or for Opendoor’s business, as many may think.

In a post on X Thursday, the company’s interim chief executive, Shrisha Radhakrishna, described AI as a “core primitive,” or key building block, for the Opendoor’s next phase of growth.

“My personal stance on AI has shifted; a year ago, I thought it wasn’t quite there to do real work with real money on the line,” he wrote. “Now, I’m convinced it can do way more than we think.”

In his post, Radhakrishna highlighted an Opendoor blog post that said the company’s goal over the next year is to bring advances in generative AI to more aspects of its platform — from its core pricing engine, to marketing, to in-home assessments.

Radhakrishna took the company’s reins on an interim basis last week after Opendoor announced that CEO Carrie Wheeler was stepping down. Backers of the stock had been calling for a leadership change and also urged the company to dive into AI and rethink its business model.

After ending Thursday’s session up 11.8%, Opendoor’s stock was up more than 39% on Friday. The heavily shorted name has soared in recent weeks amid a frenzy that sparked comparisons with prior meme-stock explosions and also lifted shares of Kohl’s Corp. and Krispy Kreme Inc.

In the first three weeks of July, Opendoor shares soared 506%, before paring back some of those gains. The stock is still up more than 183% on the year. It also emerged recently that hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones had increased his stake in the company.

Short interest as a percentage of Opendoor’s public float of shares is 23.4%.

But Erik Gordon, clinical professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said he is skeptical about Opendoor’s AI push.

“Opendoor is following the lead of bad businesses who want investors to believe that AI will turn them into good businesses,” he told MarketWatch via email. “The idea that Opendoor can use AI to do all the home inspections is humorous. How can AI tell whether the attic leaks or the refrigerator is on its last legs?”

Gordon also described Opendoor as “a classic meme stock.”

“The stock might make money for another round of memesters, but that is unlikely to last. The company has a high-risk, capex-heavy business model,” he wrote. “The suggested change to a mere middleperson model would shift it to a capital-light, added-value-light model.”

Opendoor shares had pulled back sharply earlier this month after its second-quarter results, weighed down by a weaker-than-expected financial outlook and an earnings miss. In the wake of the results, TV personality and Beyond Inc.

Executive Chair Marcus Lemonis urged the company to lower its customer-acquisition costs.

But earlier this week, investor and crypto bull Anthony Pompliano insisted that Opendoor is no meme stock. Pompliano has been one of Opendoor’s most vocal supporters on social media.

“The people calling $OPEN a meme stock don’t understand what is happening,” he wrote Tuesday on X.

Instead, he noted, retail investors are now “a hive mind” working together to identify opportunities, take financial positions and advocate for improvements at target companies. “Think of it as a decentralized hedge fund,” he said. “Everyone directs their own capital and makes their own decisions. But they loosely collaborate to use their collective intelligence to surface the best ideas.”

To illustrate his point, Pompliano cited the “hundreds of product suggestions” that people have sent to Opendoor executives, as well as feedback on company communications and the identification of potential mergers-and-acquisitions opportunities.