We recently published a list of Top 10 AI Stocks in the Spotlight This Week. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) stands against other top 10 AI stocks in the spotlight this week.
According to investment firm Morgan Stanley, electricity demand is going to prove to be resilient regardless of any recession that may come into play from Trump’s tariff policies. This is because data centers need a lot of power, and demand will not go down despite a downturn or because of efficiency gains from Ant Group, DeepSeek, and others. While it is true that industrial demand may dip in the short term, bringing manufacturing back to the US will help solve this problem.
“We believe power demand trends are more durable than in prior cycles, in part due to the inelasticity of data center demand. Industrial demand could decline in the near term, but reshoring of manufacturing is a long-term tailwind.”
-Analysts led by Andrew Percoco.
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A similar analysis by a Bloomberg report forecast that US power demand coming from data centers could swell 20-40% in 2025, with strong double-digit growth likely to persist in 2026-30.
While Morgan Stanley does acknowledge that rapid policy changes may have deep implications for large capital investments, it also forecasts electricity consumption from artificial intelligence growing tenfold by 2028.
“With this in mind, we do not want to minimize the risk of a near-term ‘shock’ in demand. This could translate into slowing order growth for some companies.”
History has shown energy stocks to remain resilient despite economic downturns. The firm noted how, since 1960, demand has fallen by just 0.2% on average during such periods.
“Utilities screen favorable in a recession given their defensive nature,”
That said, it is optimistic about strong spending on AI infrastructure from tech giants such as Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet. This is because hyperscalers want to have a lead in artificial intelligence and also because they have large product pipelines that need GPUs.
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 development team working together to create the next version of Windows.
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 April 17, Phillip Securities analyst Paul Chew maintained a “Buy” rating on the stock with a price target of $480.00. Chew’s buy rating stems from Microsoft’s strong position in the cloud and AI sectors. Its Intelligent Cloud segment, particularly Azure, is growing significantly. It is also likely that the segment may expand even further with new data center capacities backed by the rising demand for AI models. Microsoft is also witnessing continued robust demand for the Office 365 suite due to higher average revenue per user and adoption of E5 upgrades and Copilot tools. It is also well-positioned to capitalize on the AI boom due to its strategic investments in AI and data centers, as well as the ability to embed AI capabilities across its products.
Overall, MSFT ranks 1st on our list of top 10 AI stocks in the spotlight this week. 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. 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 MSFT but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.