We recently published an article titled Jim Cramer Commented on 12 Stocks Linked to Data Centers. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) stands against the other stocks that are linked to data centers.
Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, highlighted the growing significance of data centers as a major theme in the technology sector during Tuesday’s episode. He pointed out that although it might not always be immediately visible in the broader market indices, data centers have become a significant investment focus.
“The data center has been the single biggest investment story for months on end, even if it’s not always obvious from the averages… This sea-change, one that we are undergoing in real time, with the data center theme suddenly going from positive to negative, is buried within the broader indices, but it’s like a living, breathing, seething animal, a snorting bull turned into a grizzly, scratching and clawing back the gains in your portfolio.”
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Cramer offered a historical perspective, tracing the rise of NVIDIA, a graphics and gaming chip maker, as pivotal to the development of modern data centers. He explained that the company’s invention of a semiconductor capable of enabling both accelerated computing and generative artificial intelligence became foundational to a wide range of technologies.
“This semiconductor becomes the backbone of electric vehicles, of robots, and most important, of the data centers themselves… Huge warehouses full of servers. No large tech company worth its salt can afford to do without these data centers.”
However, Cramer revealed that the situation took a dramatic turn when a Chinese company found a way to achieve similar results with fewer, less expensive chips, throwing the entire data center industry into turmoil.
Describing the company as “the odd man out of the Magnificent Seven,” Cramer emphasized the company’s central role in the tech market, noting that its products are essential to the operations of numerous tech companies. Cramer pointed out that President Trump’s administration may impose tighter export controls on Chinese technology, which could further complicate the company’s market position.
Among the companies most at risk from these changes, Cramer singled out semiconductor and semiconductor capital equipment players, with the GPU kingpin standing out as the most exposed. He concluded by suggesting that some people even argue that the company’s performance could be decisive to the future fortunes of major momentum stocks in the tech sector.
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 12 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on February 25. We listed the stocks in the order that Cramer mentioned them. We also provided hedge fund sentiment for each stock as of the fourth quarter of 2024, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of over 1,000 hedge funds.
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 development team working together to create the next version of Windows.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 317
Cramer made a note of a link between the needs of companies like Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and data centers.
“Suddenly the data center feels fragile. The tech titans, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, throw in Tesla, have been dependent on this data center and the spend.”
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) creates software, services, devices, and solutions, encompassing productivity tools, cloud services, enterprise applications, gaming, as well as products for both consumers and businesses. More recently, in January, Cramer noted the company’s data center buildout as he said:
“How about two wild cards? First is Microsoft. Now, this has become a battleground stock because its aggressive data center build-out, so far failed AI PC, got a call ‘em as I see ‘em, a possible fallout with OpenAI, and the possibility that Copilot is nothing but Clippy 2, yes, that little paperclip that almost ruined Microsoft Office in the late nineties. I keep trying to figure out how CFO Amy Hood can be positive on her part of the conference call, which is really frankly the only part of the conference call that matters because she handles the guidance.
And the guidance is the guidance. We pared this one back for the Charitable Trust and if it weren’t for the fact that Microsoft has an installed base to meet demand, I have to tell you, we would’ve sold our entire position.”
Overall MSFT ranks 7th on our list of the stocks Jim Cramer recently talked about. While we acknowledge the potential of MSFT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MSFT 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 was originally published at Insider Monkey.