In this piece, we will look at the stocks that Jim Cramer recently discussed.
In a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer discussed market and industry doubts about AI. The CNBC TV host commented on reports suggesting that the costs of investing in AI were too much, while the profit was too little. Cramer believes that while the costs of AI are high, the returns will also appear soon enough. He also called AI a souped-up Google:
“I think you have to recognize that this is the most, because of the numbers you cited, this is the most I’ve heard of, emperor no. clothes, and yet I think we are right at the cusp of reasoning. And the thing that bothers people, right now it’s a souped-up Google, people won’t call it that, but I’m calling it that. But what I’m saying is this that we’re so close to reasoning, so close to be able to have a dialogue and it correcting us, that you want to get off the horse now?”
Our Methodology
To make our list of the stocks that Jim Cramer talked about, we listed down the stocks he mentioned during CNBC’s Squawk on the Street aired on August 27th.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. 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).
11. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 235
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s earnings report saw the shares fall by as much as 4% in aftermarket trading. Cramer discussed the stock in detail the day before its earnings and shared a key metric that had to be addressed during the earnings call for the firm’s long-term success:
“Okay, so, we actually had the CEO of MongoDB on this morning, talking about the overspending. Are the hyperscalers overspending? Does it really matter? . . .Talked about hallucination and the problems there. I come back and say, the answer to everything, come to this company. You cannot have generative AI, the way you’d like to, without NVIDIA. So you’re going to have, what some people say, overspend, but, its the table stakes, it’s the price to be in the business. David, there are a lot of people who feel this will come up tonight, that the total cost of ownership in NVIDIA has gotten too high and you can’t make money with it.
“[When asked what he meant by total cost of ownership] Cause if you buy the stuff and then you have it inserted by Dell, and you try to train on it and you have the inference, it turns out that you lose money.
“Okay so the rap is, NVIDIA makes all the money and nobody else does. And that’s what has to be addressed tonight. Not China. I mean everyone’s going to say China, it’s like, yes, okay so you’re a parrot. . well that’s those people. Well, I mean, no kidding, China. What matters is that we hear from Jensen Huang about that whole narrative, that the spend isn’t getting them any results, is false.
“I’m not going to disagree with that, but I think Jensen might be able to say, look, the return here is monstrous, you just have to be able to bear with it.
“[On talks about not being able to replace with AI what was happening with key software providers] Look, I think that’s a really important narrative, but I think what’s more important and why this conference call is valuable, is because if that’s the case, what’s the demand? I mean the demand, some people say it might be as high as ten to one. . .but I do think that there is a case to be made that this is by far the most important stock in the market.
“For the longest time in the world software is what mattered. Before that by the way, it was, just so you know, oil. . .but it was these, it finally became semiconductors. And for the longest time until Lip-Bu was the only person, Lip-Bu Tan, the now loved from the White House, was saying listen, one day, semiconductors are going to rule the world again. Not unlike dinosaurs. And what happened is, it happened. Because of NVIDIA.
“I’m just saying, the zeitgeist in this country had always been enterprise software, that’s how you made all your money. Right. Software. . .you have this one country, but you do not have the other semis. . .but it’s just this one semi, but semiconductors have reasserted what maybe from the days when Intel, when the Texas Instruments. . .
“People at home are trying to figure out why we are so possessed with NVIDIA? If it looks like that no one’s getting any return from NVIDIA, if it looks like that they had to go to the President to get China. And the reason is we are either going to make a lot of money with AI, right, or Dev, Dev Ittycheria, from MongoDB, says listen no one’s going to make any money. Which means the only company that’s going to make money is NVIDIA. Which means in the end you’re going to hear someone break ranks. That’s what everyone is scared about.”
“I think you have to. But frankly I don’t trust anything from China. Look DeepSeek got people out. 50% ago and that was a disaster. I’m trying to keep people in. And I try to keep people in and why I wore by the way just so you know, my NVIDIA cufflinks today? Because I want people to be in. Remember 2017. Where were the other guys? When I was naming my dog NVIDIA, where was the other guys? Now they’re all in the party. At 4.4 trillion.”
10. MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDB)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 75
MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDB) is a software company that enables businesses to manipulate and work with data. Its shares have gained a whopping 40% over the past five days after its second-quarter revenue, earnings, and subscription revenue of $591 million, $1, and $572 million all beat analyst estimates. Cramer discussed the stock with his co-host David Faber:
“And the reason is we are either going to make a lot of money with AI, right, or Dev, Dev Ittycheria, from MongoDB, says listen no one’s going to make any money.
“The reason I’m mentioning Dev, I’m mentioning Dev is because his stock is up 70 points. . .
“MongoDB is not AI. It’s software that you can use to be able to build an AI program on, but it’s a software company so we’re seeing enterprise software have its day in the sun, including that Wall Street Journal article. Enjoy it while it lasts.
“[After Faber commented that it was worth mentioning that MDB’s stock based compensation added to non-GAAP EPS meant that the firm lost 58 cents] It absolutely is and remember this is this AI versus software, but you need, you get MongoDB software it’s better, you’re able to write programs. So let’s say you have a business, and you’re using Shopify, okay, and it shows you that you have lots of customers in California and lots of customers in Texas, not a lot of customers in Pennsylvania. You don’t know what to do with that. You run it through MongoDB and it tells you that, well that pattern is because people like potato chips in Northern California. It lets you interrogate the data. And that’s a terrific thing, but it is not AI.”
9. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 156
Commenting on Cupertino, California-based technology giant Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Cramer discussed the firm’s AI spending and an analyst note about its upcoming iPhone launch:
“And these companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars and people are saying, look, Apple hasn’t spent anything yet, and their valuation is still very high.
“. . .piece that came out last night by Goldman Sachs. About how this will be a big event when Apple, on September 9th, does unveil new phones, thinner air model phone, talking about maybe a fifty dollar raise in price. But what I would, I regard this again as the people who sold this stock, when it hit 180, they didn’t realize that Apple had a lot up its sleeve. Will they buy Perplexity? I don’t know. But this is a very big deal. 17s is going to be the one you’re going to want to change. I’m gonna buy it.
“Look I continue to believe that Apple is, you gotta own it, you can’t trade it. And that I do believe that their AI strategy will come into play soon. And I think it will answer a lot people, Right now I know that Siri, please don’t answer, I know that Siri is not great. But you think they don’t know that?”
8. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 121
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is an enterprise software company that provides customer relationship management products. Its shares have lost 24% year-to-date as investors have wondered whether the rise of AI could mean that enterprise software firms find it difficult to sell their products, as their customers rely on AI for software development. Cramer discussed Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in the context of the Treasury Secretary commenting that productivity booms could show in the first quarter of next year:
“[On Treasury secretary saying productivity boom showing up in Q1 2026] Yeah well look, the productivity boom is going to come from not hiring as many people as you had to. This has so far not happened. But over and over again its the agentic. It’s like. . you bring Salesforce in, then you’ll be able to not hire as many people. . . although for Salesforce everyone’s worried about the quarter, because it’s enterprise software. . .”
Here are the CNBC TV host’s earlier comments about Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s earnings:
“Okay, Salesforce, great question. I’ve owned the stock for, I don’t know, more than a decade. Here’s the problem… It’s enterprise software, and right now, the long knives are out for enterprise software. I need to see the quarter before I tell you… We own a small position for a Charitable Trust. We used to have a very big position. I’m nervous about exactly what I just laid out, which is this enterprise software of which Salesforce is very much involved in, even its ‘agentics,’ which is marvelous, is part of the software cohort.”
7. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 335
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is one of the largest eCommerce companies in the world and a key player in the cloud computing industry. After the firm’s stock fell by 8% in August due to weak cloud computing growth, Cramer asserted over multiple appearances that he believed Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) had to buy NVIDIA’s GPUs to attract more customers to its cloud computing business. However, in this appearance, the CNBC TV host admitted to being wrong:
“Take a look at the Morgan Stanley piece today. The most significant piece of research I’ve read in a long time. By Brian Nowak. Who was the skeptic, on the conference call. That perhaps, there’s, this is, Andy Jassy, of Amazon, perhaps he’s underspending. Okay. Now Andy then just gave a very long soliloquy, there was a very thoughtful, but we we weren’t looking for thoughtful. We were looking for come out and [inaudible].
“What he’s saying is that Amazon is now going to accelerate spending. Amazon’s view, is price-performance is what matters which is why they use their own Trainium. Not performance, but price-performance, because Andy likes to make money, and you know, he makes a lot more money than everybody else. But everyone thought that Microsoft, which maybe aided by OpenAI, accelerated their spend and therefore accelerated their business. This piece, says basically, that was the narrative, I’m going back and saying it’s not, Amazon’s spending more than they have to, 2026 they’re going to get to reaccelerate the growth. 17 and a half percent growth, to 20% growth, AWS.
“The growth fears had to do, and I helped propound this, which was I think, in retrospect, ill-advised by me. That, Amazon was underspending with NVIDIA.”
6. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 294
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s shares have regained investor confidence as the firm has been able to demonstrate growth with its Azure cloud computing business. The stock has gained 21% year-to-date and is up by 43% since its post-Liberation Day tariff announcement dip. Cramer’s previous comments about Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) have wondered whether its market cap, coupled with NVDIA, represented a disproportionately high part of the total market. This time, he discussed the firm’s role in the cloud computing market:
“What he’s saying is that Amazon is now going to accelerate spending. Amazon’s view, is price-performance is what matters which is why they use their own Trainium. Not performance, but price-performance, because Andy likes to make money, and you know, he makes a lot more money than everybody else. But everyone thought that Microsoft, which maybe aided by OpenAI, accelerated their spend and therefore accelerated their business. This piece, says basically, that was the narrative, I’m going back and saying it’s not, Amazon’s spending more than they have to, 2026 they’re going to get to reaccelerate the growth. 17 and a half percent growth, to 20% growth, AWS.”
Here’s what Cramer recently said about Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s market capitalization:
“The negative narrative continues. NVIDIA and Microsoft make up almost 15% of the market. How ridiculous is that? That’s the highest concentration ever. That can’t last. Seems like a dangerous confluence…”
5. The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 93
Home improvement retailer The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)’s shares have gained a modest 5% year-to-date as the firm has struggled in a high-interest-rate environment. However, over the past month, the shares have gained 8% driven by catalysts such as its second quarter earnings report, which saw the firm outline that its same store sales growth stood at 1% overall and 4% in the US. The growth indicated to investors that there was some life in The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)’s market. Cramer discussed the firm’s earnings call:
“[On short term rates falling but high end not budging] It’s very interesting because on the Home Depot call, which was such an excellent call, they talked about the need to be able to at least get the short term rates down for home equity loans cause it’s not having to do it, not having many remodeling. Which, you need either remodel, or sales. Now sales is the long end, but remodel is the short end. They’ll take either and they are the biggest.”
The CNBC TV host discussed The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) in detail after its earnings. Here is what he said:
“We got results from Cramer fave, Home Depot, a stock I’m very happy to own for the Charitable Trust, but the numbers confused a lot of people… The quarter was good. See, you can’t judge earnings by the headline numbers alone… For starters, management emphasized that the momentum they saw in the back half of last year carried into the first half of this year…
The second positive, what’s known as the cadence… of the quarter. While Home Depot’s same-store sales were up just 1%, eh, right, not so great, things look different when you examine them month to month to month…
Management highlighted they’re seeing broad-based strength in the business with… 12 of the 16 merchandising categories posting positive same-store sales. That’s very positive… Now, you might be worried about the impact of tariffs on Home Depot’s profitability, but in the conference call, management reminded us that 50% of their goods are sourced domestically. So there will be a tariff hit, but it will be much smaller than you might’ve expected… As a result, management expects to see gross margin improvement in the second half of the year… No one expected that, believe me.
Here’s the bottom line: Despite the softer headline numbers, the details we got from Home Depot show a business that’s gaining strength, especially with the prospect of lower interest rates on the horizon. That’s why I’m confident that Home Depot’s a long-term story, and why the stock rallied in response to the quarter that many investors wrote off immediately. It’s just so intact. That’s because they didn’t listen to the conference call. Now, if you’re a member of the investing club, you would know we are holding this one for the long term. And the move up that we saw last week, believe me, you ain’t seeing nothing yet from Home Depot.”
4. The J. M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 36
The J. M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM) is a well-known American food products company with a variety of brands under its portfolio, such as Folgers, Dunkin’, and Hostess. The firm’s shares have lost 5% year-to-date, and Cramer has discussed them several times this year. In nearly all of his appearances, the CNBC TV host has lamented The J. M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM)’s decision to buy Hostess Brands. Naturally, Hostess made an appearance once again:
“Okay, David, Smucker’s the stock as Carl mentioned, is down really badly and September 11 of 2023 they bought a company called Hostess. Okay. And they paid 5.6 billion dollars including debt and they are still paying the price for that because this was still while they were trying to cut the, they’re trying to do everything they can to rationalize this. It still keeps hurting them. Coffee was okay, they raised the price of coffee because of the, obviously, inflation. And tariffs, Brazil. I liked the Uncrustables, Uncrustables are doing incredibly well, number one in frozen food, but it’s going to keep coming back to this sweet baked snacks. And David I just can’t be happy about it. I just can’t. By the way, they are, they’ve done what they can, pet food, which is fine. So you have pet food, okay, coffee, pretty good, Uncrustables, great. But you have this just black hole.
“Anyway, Smucker I think is probably a buy down here. They’ve got a good yield. The balance sheet’s okay. They made a mistake, and they’re paying the price for something they did two years ago. But I don’t like the food stocks, they’re still not making a comeback. Including General Mills, still not making a comeback.”
3. Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 78
Data analytics firm Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR)’s shares are among the top performers of the year due to their 108% gains. Cramer has discussed the firm several times this year, and in nearly every appearance, he has praised the firm’s CEO, Alex Karp. The CNBC TV host has also boasted that he was the first to predict that Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR)’s shares would cross the $100 mark. With the stock now at $156, he has now renamed it in honor of its CEO:
“NVIDIA’s coming down from where it started. But there is a stock that is just on, that I call, Karpe Diem, seize the day! Palantir. That stock was up two earlier. That too was coming in. But it’s Karpe Diem from now on, I’m changing the name. . .Yeah, because of Alex Karp. Seize the higher price.”
Here are his previous comments about Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR):
“[On a Citron piece saying PLTR was overvalued] David, Palantir? You want to get in the way of that juggernaut? The only people who short that . . .and they don’t even know. One guy called me and he goes, listen man, I’m shorting this stock, I don’t know if you know it. Plantir! Plantir!
“And yet we all know people who work at Palantir and they are geniuses. . . they are hardworking. And, you know they believe in ontology, it’s an ontological place. I’m not an ontologist myself, but I do think that having read and studied Alex Karp, I don’t want to take the other side of the trade. I think the guy is a serious competitor.”
2. Newmont Corporation (NYSE:NEM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 66
Newmont Corporation (NYSE:NEM) is an American gold mining company headquartered in Colorado. Its shares have gained 88% year-to-date as the firm has benefited from higher gold prices leading to strong earnings reports. Newmont Corporation (NYSE:NEM)’s second-quarter earnings pushed the stock to its highest level in three years after the firm’s $5.32 billion in revenue and $1.43 in earnings per share beat analyst estimates. Cramer discussed the firm’s recent cost-cutting push and its share price performance:
“[On a cost cutting push] Even though they’re one of the best performing stocks in the S&P 500 and they feel like they need to make that cutback. That’s a very good company.”
Cramer had previously discussed Newmont Corporation (NYSE:NEM) in April. Here is what he said back then after a caller inquired about buying the shares:
“Alright, well, let me go over the alternatives here. First, you can own a gold mutual fund or a gold junior mutual fund, which has a lot in the hopper, so to speak. You can buy gold, the actual ingots or bullion, or buy it from Costco.”
1. Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. (NASDAQ:KDP)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 46
Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. (NASDAQ:KDP) shares sank by a whopping 17.6% this month after it announced that it would buy coffee company JDE Peet for a whopping $18 billion price tag. Cramer discussed the deal in detail with co-host David Faber, and his opinion is rather obvious:
“It never ends, never ends. Obviously structured very poorly, obviously I want to talk to the banker who did that, because that banker, I, ChatGPT could replace that banker in nanoseconds.
“[on stock price movement since the deal was announced]Will you look at that? . . .
“[When Faber asked just why would KDP do the deal?] Why would Smucker buy Hostess? David, David, this was a structure problem. Well I mean like obviously people hated the way they structured the deal. They don’t, you talk to yourself about how you’re splitting into a beverage company and a beverage company. I mean, hello, right, right?
“But David someone made a mistake here. And normally you would say listen, I don’t know it’s the company or the bankers but someone made a mistake. I think you need to call out. . .
“[On what was the mistake] The combination is a loser combination and the way that they break the company. . .
“[The market] just hates it. And it’s not gonna start liking it.
“But I will not hear you, you will not say this was a stupid deal, you won’t say that will you?
“Well you know like, people are being, someone’s trying to fire someone over maybe a mortgage thing, how about firing someone over an incredible loss?”
While we acknowledge the potential of KDP to grow, 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 KDP and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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