We recently compiled a list of the 20 Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks to Buy According to Analysts. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stands against the other AI stocks.
Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2025 revolved around AI. If not, it’s all that exhibitors could show. Talking about the highlight of the show, it was undoubtedly the keynote from Jensen Huang. The keynote included new products to advance gaming, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and agentic AI. Huang kicked off his talk by reflecting on the company’s 3-decade journey. Later on, he highlighted several significant advancements.
Takeaways From CEO Jensen Huang’s Keynote at CES 2025
As per Huang, AI has been advancing at an ‘incredible pace.’ It started with perception AI, meaning understanding images, words, and sounds. Then it came to generative AI, meaning creating text, images, and sound. And now, it’s the era of physical AI, meaning AI that can proceed, reason, plan, and act. The AI giant introduced GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs, which are powered by Blackwell architecture. These GPUs provide significant improvements in AI-driven rendering, enhancing gaming and creative workflows. Furthermore, Huang unveiled “Cosmos,” which is a suite of foundational AI models capable of generating photorealistic video. The models have been designed in such a way that train robots and automated systems more efficiently, further advancing robotics and autonomous technologies.
The company and its partners have rolled out AI Blueprints for agentic AI, which includes PDF-to-podcast for efficient research and video search and summarization for assessing significant quantities of video and images — allowing developers to build, test, and run AI agents anywhere.
Agentic AI- Road Ahead in 2025
TechInformed interviewed experts from leading technology companies to explore predictions about Agentic AI. As per Steven Webb, UK chief technology and innovation officer, Capgemini, 2025 will see wider adoption of small language models (SLMs) and AI agents as an era of Agentic AI is fast approaching. Using multiple SLMs throughout a toolchain is expected to play a critical role in the AI evolution. This will include going beyond the already familiar LLMs such as GPT.
Furthermore, Alan Jacobson (chief data and analytics officer at Alteryx) believes that 2025 will see the rise of Gen AI agents used to solve problems. This is an approach that is made possible by reducing costs and improving the performance and speed of LLMs. Frameworks for orchestrating Agentic AI work are expected to emerge. Notably, a large percentage of use cases are expected to start to employ this approach.
Our Methodology
To list the 20 Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks to Buy According to Analysts, we conducted extensive research and sifted through numerous online rankings. After getting an initial list of 25-30 stocks, we chose the ones that were popular among hedge funds and that analysts saw upside to. Finally, the stocks were arranged in ascending order of their average upside potential, as of 14th January. We also mentioned hedge fund sentiments around each stock, as of Q3 2024.
At Insider Monkey we are obsessed with 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).
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: 116
Average Upside Potential: 28.0%
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) established itself as a leading AI business by embedding AI across its CRM platform and associated applications. At the heart of the company’s strategy is the push into AI-driven solutions. It recently announced the roll-out of Agentforce, a new product designed to leverage the next generation of AI via intelligent agents. The AI integration goes beyond Agentforce. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) continues to enhance its core offerings, which include Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, with AI capabilities. Its Data Cloud remains well-positioned to benefit from the AI trend, as customers explore AI-driven CRM deployments.
Analyst Bradley Sills from Bank of America Securities gave a ‘Buy’ rating on the shares of Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM), giving a price target of $440.00. The analyst remains optimistic about the combination of factors, such as advancements in its Agentforce 2.0 platform. Integration of Agentforce in numerous Salesforce clouds and third-party applications like SAP, Adobe, and Workday enhances its functionality and revenue growth potential. The improvements in AI reasoning capabilities via the Atlas engine can drive additional revenue opportunities, contributing 1% – 2% growth in FY 2026 and FY 2027.
Parnassus Investments, an investment management company, released a Q2 2024 investor letter. Here is what the fund said:
“Salesforce, Inc.’s (NYSE:CRM) growth continues to moderate, and investors question its prospect as it relates to AI. We remain confident that the company, which developed the original salesforce automation product and pioneered the SaaS (software as a service) delivery model, is well positioned to capitalize on emerging AI opportunities.”
Overall CRM ranks 17th on our list of the best AI stocks to buy according to analysts. While we acknowledge the potential of CRM as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some deeply undervalued AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for a deeply undervalued AI stock that is more promising than AI but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 8 Best Wide Moat Stocks to Buy Now and 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
