Mizuho Picks Salesforce (CRM) as Top April-Ending Earnings Play

We recently published a list of 10 AI Stocks on Wall Street’s Radar. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) stands against other AI stocks on Wall Street’s radar.

Days after the Biden-era rule on AI chips export was rescinded, a bipartisan group of eight U.S. lawmakers has now introduced a bill requiring makers of artificial intelligence chips to include technology that verifies the location of their chips before exporting them.

Introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Chip Security Act will aim to address reports of U.S. export-controlled AI chips being smuggled into China.

The bill comes shortly after US President Donald Trump began his tour of the Middle East this week, announcing several deals that will send AI chips to countries in the Middle East. This has been despite growing opposition from some inside the US government.

READ NEXT: Top 10 AI Stocks Making Headlines on Wall Street and 9 AI Stocks Poised to Gain from Trump’s Middle East AI Push 

“In order for the United States to maintain our technological advantage, we must employ safeguards to help ensure export controls are not being circumvented, allowing these advanced AI chips to fall into the hands of nefarious actors.”

-Rep. Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican who introduced the House bill, said in a statement.

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).

Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 162

Salesforce Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a cloud-based CRM company that has gained popularity after it unveiled its AI-powered platform called Agentforce. On May 14, Mizuho lowered the firm’s price target on the stock to $380 from $425 and kept an “Outperform” rating on the shares. The rating, issued as part of an earnings preview, stated how the firm’s software checks were “very solid overall.”

The analyst told investors in a research note that even though there were a few bottlenecks in April due to tariffs, including some customer pauses due to certain verticals such as retail and manufacturing, most of the partners executed well. The firm further said that cybersecurity generally performed better than other areas of software, and that its favorite April-ending stocks to own ahead of the earnings prints are Salesforce, Okta, and Snowflake.

Overall, CRM ranks 4th on our list of AI stocks on Wall Street’s radar. While we acknowledge the potential of CRM as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk.  If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CRM and that has 100x upside potential, 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.