CNBC’s ‘Mad Money’ host Jim Cramer placed his bets on Tim Cook‘s Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to skyrocket if it made strategic acquisitions and stopped its stock buyback program.

What Happened: The third-largest company in the world, with a market capitalization of $3.123 trillion, was poised to “soar,” said Cramer in a recent X post.

This was contingent on Cramer’s earlier views, which reiterated an earlier point of acquiring the artificial intelligence-powered answer engine, Perplexity.

He said, “If Apple buys Perplexity, we would have our winning bot and the stock would soar.”

The recommendation is influenced by the U.S. government's antitrust ruling against Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), expected by August 2025, which may force Google to end default search deals with Apple's Safari browser.

This will create an opportunity for Apple to integrate Perplexity’s conversational AI to compete in the evolving search market.

Cramer further called out Apple on its buyback program and said that “Continued buybacks will do nothing.” This comes as Apple spent the most on stock buybacks in 2024.

During its second quarter earnings, the company also said its board authorized an additional share repurchase program of up to $100 billion.

See Also: Nvidia Is ‘On A March To $5 Trillion’ Market Capitalization, Says Dan Ives As He Predicts Bullish Environment For Tech And Crypto: ‘Very Strong Second Half’

Why It Matters: Apart from Cramer, Dan Ives has also stated that Apple should buy Perplexity AI on multiple occasions.

He said at the beginning of July that Apple's "treadmill approach" needs to end, and it needs to eye a big, splashing partnership with either Perplexity or Anthropic.

"Look, it's about the developers. If you look at OpenAI, if you look at Google, if you look at Microsoft, they (Apple) need to get into the game. That is something that can't be done in Cupertino," said added.

Price Action: Shares of Apple were up 0.23% in premarket on Wednesday. It has fallen by 14.25% on a year-to-date basis and 10.95% over the past year.

Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings shows that Apple had a weaker price trend over the medium and long term but a stronger trend over the short term. Its momentum ranking was poor, and its value ranking was also bad at the 9.40th percentile. The details of other metrics are available here.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (NASDAQ:QQQ), which track the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, were lower in premarket on Wednesday. The SPY was down 0.051% at $621.82, while the QQQ declined 0.22% to $555.52, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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