Rockwell Automation Inc. (ROK): Driving Industrial Automation with AI Partnerships

We recently published a list of Top 10 AI News Updates You Should Not Miss. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) stands against other top AI news updates you should not miss.

Leading companies across diverse industries, including electronics, IT infrastructure, surveillance, renewable energy, robotics, and cybersecurity, are heavily investing in AI and machine learning to leverage the technology for widescale innovation. In turn, companies are able to reduce operational costs, tackle workforce challenges, and transform client experiences.

For instance, in the IT infrastructure space, AI spending is expected to jump to $509.1 billion in 2027 from $175.9 billion in 2023, according to the IDC. The spending on AI platforms is expected to rise as they become increasingly important for business’s digital operations.

“Harnessing machine learning can be transformational, but for it to be successful, enterprises need leadership from the top. This means understanding that when machine learning changes one part of the business — the product mix, for example — then other parts must also change. This can include everything from marketing and production to supply chain, and even hiring and incentive systems,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, co-founder of Workhelix.

Elsewhere, PwC global chairman, Mohamed Kande, during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos urged people to not be afraid of AI in the workplace but embrace it as a digital colleague.

“People fear what they don’t understand, so exposing them to the technology, putting in their hands makes a big difference,” Kande said about AI, adding that doing so allows employees to view AI as a “digital colleague…You don’t fear your colleagues, you partner with them…So we are actually asking people to partner with the technology.”

For this article, we selected AI stocks by reviewing news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment taken from Insider Monkey’s database of 900 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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Rockwell Automation Inc. (ROK): Driving Industrial Automation with AI Partnerships

A technician in a factory setting next to an industrial automation machine.

Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 38

Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) is leading industrial automation and digital transformation globally with flagship products like Allen Bradley and FactoryTalk that enable production monitoring and easy application of ML concepts to overcome product quality issues while ensuring process integrity. The company also partnered with leading AI firms like Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), integrating APIs to provide data interoperability, process automation, and live collaboration to industrial clients while addressing workforce shortages.

On January 16th, Stephens upgraded Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE:ROK) to “Overweight” from “Equal-Weight” and also raised its target price to $350 from $275. The brokerage is of the view that it is time to include the stock in investment portfolios due to growing visibility to sales and earnings returning to growth by the second half and progress toward a reinvigorated cost-management and operational excellence program. Analysts added that wish list names like Rockwell “rarely come cheap,” but the stock has generally outperformed markets during the early phase of earnings recoveries.

Overall, ROK ranks 5th on our list of top AI news updates you should not miss. While we acknowledge the potential of ROK 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 timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ROK but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.