The Future of Artificial Intelligence: 5 Companies, 5 Predictions

1. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 269     

Related Prediction: AI-Capable Azure is Perfect Cloud Platform

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) develops, licenses, and supports software, services, devices, and solutions worldwide. Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure, is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via world-distributed data centers. It also offers AI-capable services. Gartner, a technological research and consulting firm, has dubbed Microsoft Azure the perfect public cloud platform.

On October 26, RBC Capital analyst Rishi Jaluria maintained an Outperform rating on Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock and lowered the price target to $310 from $380, noting that the company’s first quarter results were decent, but its guidance was rough, with second quarter seen below expectations on a larger-than-expected slowdown in the cyclical consumer businesses and mixed commercial outlook.

At the end of the second quarter of 2022, 269 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $61.2 billion in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), compared to 258 in the previous quarter worth $56 billion.

In its Q2 2022 investor letter, Baron Funds, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“Shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), a leading global provider of software solutions, declined 16.6% in the quarter along with the broader software group as well as due to growing concerns of a potential macro-driven slowdown. This is despite the company posting strong quarterly financial results and successfully absorbing headwinds from the war in Ukraine. The company had 21% revenue growth, 23% operating income growth, and 35% growth in Microsoft Cloud (all year-over-year in constant currency), which now represents 47% of total revenues. (read more…)

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