We recently published a list of 9 Trending AI Stocks Making Headlines Today. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) stands against other AI stocks that are making headlines today.
With the AI arms race getting more intense than ever, it seems that some people are increasingly realizing that cooperation, rather than competition, is key. The president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations (NCUSCR) is bringing this into focus more recently. According to Stephen Orlins, who participated in the annual China Development Forum in Beijing, China and the United States must cooperate in artificial intelligence. He also said that duplication of efforts in the area could be avoided.
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Since artificial intelligence is becoming a key area of competition between the two countries, and China has come neck-to-neck in competition with its rapidly advancing AI breakthroughs, the need to cooperate becomes even more pressing. Washington has been levying successive rounds of sanctions against China’s AI and chip sectors to slow down its advancement, while China has, in turn, been open-sourcing its technology, posing a threat to its Western counterparts.
Chinese tech giants such as Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba have been flooding the markets with their AI models that can be downloaded, modified, and even integrated with other solutions. The advent of DeepSeek was a breakthrough moment in itself, presenting the tech world with efficient and low-cost AI models that wreaked havoc in the tech world.
In the West, the policy has been to keep artificial intelligence exclusive. Users typically have to pay to access advanced models. On the contrary, China has been retaliating by using available resources for mass AI development. Provided that open-source AI becomes powerful enough, the West’s strategy to monetize AI will collapse. The contrast in the policies and strategies between the two countries highlights how the West is focused on profit-driven innovation while China is focused on mass adoption. This way, China is not only boosting its technological capabilities smartly but also challenging Western dominance in the AI space.
For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds. The hedge fund data is as of Q4 2024.
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 computer engineer seated in front of several connected consoles, illustrating the depth of cloud services offered by the company.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 317
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) provides AI-powered cloud, productivity, and business solutions, focusing on efficiency, security, and AI advancements. On March 24, Jefferies reiterated the stock as “Buy”, stating that Microsoft is among the firm’s favorite large-cap stocks.
“Recent weakness has created attractive risk/reward.”
The analyst believes that Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, will continue to gain market share against competitor Amazon Web Services, driven by artificial intelligence-powered growth. Microsoft 365 Commercial Cloud fundamentals also look strong. Furthermore, despite its ramp-up of AI investments, the company’s profit margins are anticipated to continue growing.
“MSFT’s margin in the mid-40s are still well above large cap peers in the mid 30s,”
Overall, MSFT ranks 2nd on our list of AI stocks that are on Wall Street’s radar today. While we acknowledge the potential of MSFT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some 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 is originally published at Insider Monkey.
