We recently published an article titled Jim Cramer Says AI Is Back & Discusses These 10 Stocks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) stands against the other stocks.

In a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer commented on how market sentiment towards AI appeared to be changing. “Yeah look, this is a moment where, if you have AI, we are now saying it’s good,” he said. “Remember we were sick of AI for a while and now AI’s back,” Cramer added.

He also commented on the current tensions between the US and China regarding AI and overall trade. The US has restricted sales of advanced AI chips to China, and to Cramer, the current environment “feels so much like Russia and United States from the Khrushchev time on, it really does.” He added that US technology was superior to the Chinese, and when co-host David Faber pointed out that China was pushing out a lot of STEM graduates, Cramer replied: “We’re four times smarter than they are. Our schools. Four times better.”

The US AI chip sanctions have included restricting all but 18 countries from being able to acquire the latest AI chips. The laws were introduced under the Biden administration and Cramer’s been their critic. When Faber asked him to explain the rules, called ‘Diffusion Rules,’ Cramer outlined:

“Okay so Biden picked 18 friends. 18 friendly nations that were allowed to get all the chips that they . . and then there was the next group, which was the not so friendly, which when look at, is a lot of EU countries which I always thought were friendly because of NATO, that kind of thing. . .Iceland, Mexico, not in there. And then there’s just the enemies list.”

Cramer added rather cryptically: “And some people now feel that they’re going to offer licensing for a country which would really be bad. Worse than what Biden did.”

He added:

“No they have got to get that changed because. . .if you go check, Jensen Huang did this . . .he did this huge tour, all around the world, to all these countries that are basically going to be denied and that are not friendly.”

As for the impact of tariffs on economic growth, Cramer believes: “Well, we gotta see, this next quarter is the quarter where, everyone is so concerned.”

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 May 1st.

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).

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 115

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) is one of Jim Cramer’s favorite pharmaceutical and healthcare stocks. In several appearances, the CNBC host has pointed out that the firm’s non-weight loss drug portfolio and sizable manufacturing investments can create compelling tailwinds for the stock. Cramer also believes that the weight loss drug market is now dependent on a pill, and his latest comments about Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) built on this hypothesis:

“Well I mean Dave Ricks was on and really, there was some research this morning that said look really it’s only going to be about two, three percent that ultimately it gets steered to Wegovy. Look, if you go back to the last quarter, Lilly had the same thing happen. Lilly just does not guide aggressively. David Ricks is very conservative. The stock tends to go down more than six, seven, it tends to go down eight, nine, and then you gotta start buying it. We’ve been going through this. We own it through the trust. This is like the third time we’ve had to deal with this. But in the end, what David Ricks said, that was the most important thing, is they have the pill. And the pill mean two hundred million people overseas. Look, you can’t use that, the injector’s gotta be kept cold, people don’t like to take a shot. Whoever has the pill, is going to be the winner.”

“To me, this one where you’ve literally got a CEO, who is the least promotional, Carl this guy’s the least promotional CEO I have ever, really self-effacing.”

“But I love the fact that they are just talking about these markets, like China, India. And how when you get the pill, they’re gonna go all over. He did not talk too much about the claims. They were trying to bait him into saying more things. But there are so many studies out that are going to indicate that it’s just . . .a longer life pill.”

“Well David Ricks would tell you, look the studies of hypertension. Look in the end, it’s going to Alzheimer’s and cancer. What does it do for those?”

Overall LLY ranks 8th on our list of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. While we acknowledge the potential of LLY 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 LLY 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.