13 Best NASDAQ Stocks to Buy So Far in 2025

2. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 317

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) develops and supports software, services, devices, and solutions. One of its main businesses is its Productivity and Business Processes segment. It offers Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, office 365 Security & Compliance, Microsoft Viva, and Microsoft 365 Copilot. Its products are sold through OEMs, distributors, and resellers.

On March 31, Jefferies analyst Brent Thill reaffirmed a Buy rating on the company but lowered the price target from $550 to $500. While this sentiment came from software sector adjustments in general, the firm is confident in the company’s ability to capitalize on the expanding AI sector. Brent Thill believes that the company’s integration of AI into Azure and Microsoft 365 Commercial Cloud will significantly help its growth.

Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) AI platform helps it accelerate the development of advanced AI models and is called the Azure AI Foundry. It gained over 200,000 monthly active users within just 2 months of its launch. Similarly, the company also offers Copilot Studi0 which creates personalized AI agents. It helped 160,000 organizations create 400,000 agents in 3 months.

Columbia Seligman Global Technology Fund stated the following regarding Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in its Q4 2024 investor letter, believing that Oracle is positioned to capitalize on the AI-driven cloud demand:

“Within software, the fund maintained an underweight position to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), which proved beneficial as share price for the company fell during the fourth quarter. Microsoft’s outlook for its Azure business came down slightly, which hampered the stock price at times during the quarter and, combined with losses on the Open AI business, led to a disappointing end to 2024. The company has guided its capital expenditure spending up slightly and investors continue to wait for additional monetization from the company’s large commitment to AI infrastructure spending. The fund continued to hold an overweight allocation to Oracle as we believe Oracle is positioned to be a major beneficiary of the AI rollout and has the potential to compete with other large cloud providers, such as Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft. Oracle shares moved lower during the quarter and the stock suffered its worst day of the year in December, as the company narrowly underperformed analysts’ average estimates. Oracle’s business model remains strong as demand for computer power that can handle AI is increasing and the company’s revenues from its cloud infrastructure unit moved higher year over year.”