Apple Inc. (AAPL) Maintains Overweight - Morgan Stanley Highlights "10-Year High Margins" and Services Growth

We recently published a list of 10 AI Stocks in the News Today. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stands against other AI stocks in the news today.

The Trump administration may soon abandon the tiered approach to accessing advanced AI chips and replace it with a global licensing regime with government-to-government agreements. Developing such a structure would likely conform to President Donald Trump’s broader trade strategy of making deals with individual countries. The US would then have an easier time leveraging the American-designed chips in negotiations.

“There are some voices pushing for elimination of the tiers. I think it’s still a work in progress.” — -Wilbur Ross, who served as Commerce secretary during the first Trump administration.

Changes to the Biden-era rule will potentially limit global access to AI chips and the tiers that previously helped determine how many advanced semiconductors a country could obtain.

READ ALSO: 12 AI Stocks Making Waves Today and 10 AI Stocks in the Spotlight This Week

Provided that the plans to change these rules follow through, these US chips would have the power to steer trade talks.  The rule, known as the Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion, was issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce in January. Companies must conform to its restrictions starting on May 15.

Other possible changes being considered in the Trump administration include a lower threshold for an exception to licensing. Currently, orders under the equivalent of about 1,700 of Nvidia’s H100 chips do not count toward country caps. Rather, the government needs to be notified of the order with no licence necessary.

The administration is considering making the cutoff orders under the equivalent of 500 H100 chips. All of these possible changes by the Trump administration aim to make the rules stronger yet simpler. However, a few experts are of the belief that removing the tiers would make the rule even more complicated.

Many companies and the industry as a whole don’t approve of the rule in the first place, stating that limiting access to chips would provoke countries to buy from China instead. Seven Republican senators even sent a letter to Lutnick, the United States Secretary of Commerce, in mid-April to have the rule withdrawn. The letter stated that the restrictions would incentivize buyers, especially in Tier 2 countries, to turn to China’s “unregulated cheap substitutes.”

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).

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 166

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is a technology company. On May 5^th, Morgan Stanley reiterated the stock as “Overweight”.  The firm said it’s sticking with Apple following its quarterly 10-Q report.

“We share 4 observations from Apple’s 10-Q: (1) we see clear evidence of component/finished goods pull-forward in F2Q, (2) Advertising, App Store and Cloud continue to drive Services growth, (3) Op margins reached a 10 year high, and (4) Apple does not rule out raising prices to mitigate tariffs.”

Overall, AAPL ranks 6th on our list of AI stocks in the news today. While we acknowledge the potential of AAPL 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 AAPL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

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