We recently published a list of 9 Trending AI News Updates Driving US Markets. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) stands against other trending AI news updates driving US markets.

As the global AI race heats up, the Trump Administration’s downsizing of federal agencies poses a risk to AI development in the US. His cost-cutting measures are already impacting AI research efforts. Yesterday, a key federal AI research agency witnessed layoffs and faced potential budget cuts. Several US National Science Foundation employees, with expertise in AI, were terminated, threatening the agency’s ability to sustain AI research.

The government’s latest move also affected the Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships within the National Science Foundation. The department played a key role in funneling government grants related to AI. Industry experts heavily criticized the downsizing.

Meanwhile, Chinese buyers are circumventing US export curbs to acquire the latest AI chips from top US manufacturers, exacerbating Trump’s challenges in cutting off the transfer of American technology to China. Washington imposed export controls in 2022 to curb China’s access to semiconductors for training AI models, but underground brokers are still managing to bypass the controls.

“China will help bridge the technological divide and prevent technological innovation from becoming a game for the rich countries and the wealthy,” said Chinese politician and computer scientist, Lou Qinjian, at the start of the annual National People’s Congress.

We selected AI stocks by reviewing news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment taken from Insider Monkey’s database of over 1000 hedge funds.

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).

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Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 79

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) offers diverse services ranging from agile transformation and data analytics to intelligent automation, AI, and software engineering. The company is prioritizing R&D and AI agent deployment using Nvidia Corporation’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) AI solutions for accelerated placement of multi-agent networks and seamless integration into enterprise systems. It is overhauling its core banking modernization capabilities through platform acquisitions, facilitating data unification from legacy and modern banking architectures for product innovation.

On March 4th, Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) announced the acquisition of Denmark-based Halfspace, which helps organizations make informed and accurate decisions at faster speeds by using AI to streamline business workflows and through data science and analytics tools. The acquisition is expected to improve Accenture plc’s (NYSE:ACN) AI capabilities. Furthermore, the development will enable the company to extend its Center for Advanced AI into the Nordics to help customers capture and generate value from AI.

“AI adoption is accelerating across the enterprise faster than any prior technology. Our research shows that 69% of executives believe it brings new urgency to reinvention. As one of the largest pure-play AI companies in Northern Europe, Halfspace expands and complements our AI capabilities and talent and enhances our ability to help our clients benefit fully from the potential of AI.”

– said Carsten Sachmann, Accenture’s lead for the Nordic region.

Overall, ACN ranks 1st on our list of trending AI news updates driving US markets. While we acknowledge the potential of ACN as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ACN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

 

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