We recently published a list of 12 Best Tech Stocks to Buy For Long-Term Investment. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stands against other tech stocks to buy for long-term investment.
On April 1, Chris Verrone, chief market strategist at Strategas Research Partners, appeared on CNBC’s ‘Closing Bell’ to talk about his outlook on the tech sector. Verrone believes that most of the current market’s negative sentiment has already been factored into recent stock prices. He highlighted that even after the market’s decline, the VIX, and the currency and bond volatility are lower than they were during the mid-March stress period. Plus, fewer stocks are hitting new lows. He thinks that market lows are formed during periods of bad news, and the market will rally from its current level with an anticipated range of 5,900 to 5,950.
Verrone believes that the current downturn is more than a typical 10% correction so it will take some time to figure out the market’s true direction. He emphasized the importance of monitoring market breadth, new highs, and credit conditions in the upcoming weeks and months. He also acknowledged the shift in investor sentiment, with more bears than bulls. As the conversation touched on the impact of the Fed and politics in a market, Verrone stated that he pays more attention to what the 2-year Treasury yield tells him instead of listening to what Fed officials have to say. He noted that the 2-year yield’s decline from 3.83% to 3.85% suggests a shift in the market expectations for the Fed’s actions. He highlighted the resilience of financials during the correction and contrasted it with the weakness of tech. He thinks that, unlike financials that entered the correction as leaders, the tech sector might not be able to regain the leadership role.
While Verrone’s stance acknowledges the current weakness in tech, it’s important to note that the tech sector remains one of the more innovative markets in the long run. For instance, MAG7 continues to be a driving force for this market.
Our Methodology
We first sifted through financial media reports to compile a list of the top tech stocks that are being touted as long term investment plays. We then selected the 12 stocks that were the most popular among elite hedge funds and that analysts were bullish on. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of the number of hedge funds that have stakes in them, as of Q4 2024. The hedge fund data was sourced from Insider Monkey’s database which tracks the moves of over 900 elite money managers.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A customer service team in an office setting using the company’s Customer 360 platform to communicate with customers.
Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 162
Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) provides CRM technology that connects companies and customers. One of its offerings includes Agentforce which is an agentic layer of the salesforce platform. It also offers Slack, which is a workplace communication and productivity platform; and Tableau, which is an end-to-end analytics solution for enterprise use cases and intelligent analytics.
On March 26, Kirk Materne from Evercore ISI reiterated a Buy rating on the company with a $420 price target. This sentiment comes from Salesforce Inc.’s (NYSE:CRM) strong growth, which is fueled by its unified platform. This includes the Customer 360 platform, Data Cloud, and Agentforce AI product line, which together integrate CRM applications, data management, and AI-powered automation. Agentforce was able to acquire 3,000 paying customers in just 90 days.
Agentforce essentially integrates AI agents into core applications and automates customer service inquiries, sales processes, and other workflows. Data Cloud acts as the foundation for Agentforce and provides the data needed for AI-powered automation. It exceeded 50 trillion records and doubled year-over-year in FQ4 2025. The company’s FQ4 revenue increased by 8% year-over-year. Data Cloud and AI ARR surged by 120%. The company now projects FY26 revenue to increase by 7% to 8% growth.
Parnassus Growth Equity Fund stated the following regarding Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) reported third-quarter results that exceeded analysts’ expectations, as the integration of AI technology across the customer relationship management software company’s product offerings has driven robust growth in new deals.”
Overall, CRM ranks 9th on our list of the best tech stocks to buy for long-term investment. While we acknowledge the growth potential of CRM, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold great promise for delivering high returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CRM but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
