Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly the most disruptive technology of this century. The use of AI and its offshoots such as deep learning and machine learning have allowed computers to do things that previously required human intelligence. The impact of AI is so profound that some companies started to call themselves AI companies.
The upside of companies embracing the power of AI into their company DNA can also be found in the current valuations on the stock market. Many believe that organizations who invest heavily in AI will certainly be winners in tomorrow’s economy. So let’s take a look at a few of those companies who are ahead of their game in implementing AI in their businesses.
Disclaimer: The content of this webpage is not an investment advice and does not constitute any offer or solicitation to offer or recommendation of any investment product. The editors may or may not have positions in one or more of the companies featured in the article.
From America
Let’s first look at the companies from North America that are profiting directly from Artificial Intelligence by offering hardware, software and/or services.
NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) is the leading graphics chip company and its graphics cards have become the industry standard for data centres around the world. With a market cap of over $800 billion at one point, NVIDIA has added $300 billion since October showing the demand for its graphics cards and its firm grip as the de facto standard for graphics performance and acceleration.
During the training phase of machine learning, there is demand for a lot of computing power which the graphics processing unit (GPU) made by NVIDIA supports well. While traditional CPUs are extensively used at data centres, it is the GPUs that are being used to accelerate a wide variety of applications. The company is also an AI pioneer with its platforms capable of cloud-based gaming and enabling self-driving cars.
Snowflake
Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) is a data warehousing company offering cloud-based data storage and analytics service. With Snowflake, you can store all your data in a single place and calculate your compute independently. As an enterprise-ready cloud data warehouse, Snowflake is agile and allows you to scale your requirements without sacrificing on features.
The platform also scales automatically to find the right balance between performance and cost. While the stock has been volatile since its IPO, Snowflake seems to be back in the game gaining 15 percent in August, which shows that investors trust in its business model that separates compute from storage.
Lemonade
Lemonade (NYSE: LMND) is a good example of a company using AI to disrupt antiquated industries like insurance. It is a full-stack insurance carrier offering its products to renters and homeowners in the US, contents and liability insurance in Germany and the Netherlands, and renters’ insurance in France. It recently acquired Metromile to build its AI car insurance product.
The company has built a number of AI products such as AI Maya which acts as a virtual assistant that can collect information and provide a quote and even handle the payment. There is an AI bot called Jim capable of handling claims while CX.AI handles all the customer questions. With all the data, Lemonade is a company that could expand to many verticals and offer new services using its AI products.
Palantir
Palantir (NYSE: PLTR) is arguably one of the decisive AI companies to follow right now. Its ability to land government contracts remains unmatched and while the industry focus remains on its Gotham Platform, Palantir has been successfully able to bring its services to more profitable avenues such as enterprises, SMBs and even end consumers.
It is ahead of many companies since it operates with technologies such as radar, satellites and drones. The ability of Palantir to work on future technologies right now gives it a huge lead in a market where these technologies might become synonymous with most companies. Palantir is one of the important AI stocks to watch right now because of its ability to empower organisations to effectively integrate their data, decisions and operations.
Amazon
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is a true “AI First” company and a leader in the use of AI to scale its business and services. From targeted advertising to search results on Amazon to Amazon Web Services, the company is using AI across its products. It is also the leader in digital assistants with Alexa, which has now become part of many households across the world. Besides it extensive suite of AI products for third parties on AWS, Amazon is pioneering using AI in different fields from hiring to quality assurance and cashierless stores.
Google (Alphabet)
Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) uses AI in virtually every aspect of its products. From building spam filters for Gmail to ad pricing to video recommendation on YouTube, there is no aspect of Google that does not rely on AI. It is also the parent of the autonomous vehicle company Waymo, which was the first to launch a fully driverless commercial robotaxi service on public roads last year. Google Cloud solutions are fuelling the AI ambitions of many third parties, they open sourced the popular framework TensorFlow and invest a lot of time and effort into educating the public about the possibilities of AI. Their latest invention in this space is called Google Pathways, which is a a next-generation AI architecture. With a market cap hovering around $2 trillion, Google is an excellent example of AI used across products and services.
Facebook (Meta Platforms)
Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) recently changed its name to Meta Platforms to better reflect the various products and services it offers to consumers. It is also the company driving the buzzword Metaverse right now. It uses AI technology to deliver user customisable content on the newsfeed and limit the distribution of harmful content. The company is less known for its extensive investments into the AI space and community, open sourcing the popular PyTorch framework and with AI guru Yann LeCun leading its AI ambitions, we are most likely to see more grant inventions in the near future.
Tesla
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) ceo Elon Musk has always called for the company to be seen as “much more than an electric car company.” It runs Tesla AI Day to showcase the work and deep AI activity in hardware on the inference level and on the training level. Tesla, with its current technology and data gathered from all its electric vehicles on the road, is in a position to use AI beyond self-driving cars and deliver on the humanoid robot that Tesla is building.
Microsoft
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is one of the biggest technology companies in the world and it is investing heavily in developing AI services to maintain its early lead in the market. Microsoft has been talking about machine learning for several years now and AI plays a vital part in most of its products including Bing, Microsoft Office, Windows and even Xbox games. It is also building a supercomputer on its Azure cloud platform in collaboration with OpenAI (in which it invested a billion dollars) to train AI models on the edge. Microsoft is one of the AI companies to follow that could take cloud computing from data centres to the edge.
Salesforce
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) is one of those companies that was truly built on the cloud and it remains a leader in the CRM business. With AI spending slated to double globally in the next four years, Salesforce could use its market leadership to provide sales and productivity AI solutions.
It currently has an edge in the AI market with its Einstein platform which is a leader in sales intelligence AI. Salesforce has managed to challenge Microsoft and grow its market share at the same time. With its ethical approach to AI, Salesforce is positioned to reap rewards as more businesses embrace AI. In the recent biography of founder Marc Benioff called Trailblazer, the entrepreneur reconfirms the company ambition to be a leader in the AI space. It invests time and effort in initiatives like the AI Economist which aims to help countries in the future to make better decisions on tax policy.
IBM
IBM (NYSE: IBM) is another early leader in the world of AI with its Watson supercomputer revolutionising the healthcare industry. While IBM overpromised the use of its AI supercomputer Watson for a while, a recent study has found Watson perform as well as AI services from the likes of Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon. Under the stewardship of Arvind Krishna, IBM is turning around its fortunes with domain-specific solutions, AI and Quantum computing.
Apple
With a market cap of over $2.5 trillion, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the world’s largest technology company by revenue and continues to remain the most valuable company. With its leadership in the personal computing space and shift to in-house chipset for even its Mac computers, Apple is able to cram in more AI computing on its devices than before. These AI performances are translating into better power efficiency and superior photography experience. With the learning from its consumer electronics, Apple is reportedly working on launching its own self-driving vehicle by 2025. Research shows that Apple is leading the acquisition of AI startups, buying more companies than many competitors combined.
C3.ai
C3.ai (NYSE: AI) is widely acknowledged as the pure-play AI stock right now. While most American tech companies have a diversified business and AI is being embedded into their products, C3.ai is entirely focused on artificial intelligence. As a SaaS company, C3.ai allows companies to deploy large AI applications.
It offers tools to help customers accelerate software development and reduce cost and risk. As a first mover in the AI industry, C3.ai is uniquely positioned to become a big winner in the long term. With the AI SaaS market still evolving, C3.ai could grow even bigger with new products, technology and services.
From Europe
While every tech company is essentially an AI company in the US, Europe is where a number of companies are being born as AI-first companies. These companies are trying to digitise old school businesses and automate business processes at scale. UiPath and Darktrace are two of the most vital companies in Europe right now
UiPath
UiPath (NYSE: PATH) can be described as both American as well as a European software company. It is a robotic process automation company founded in Romania by Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă and headquartered in New York City. Analysts feel that UiPath is not getting the attention it deserves and some even call it a SaaS giant growing in the shadows.
UiPath creates software that serves the robotic processes automation market and helps businesses decide which tasks can be automated using custom software. With a large number of companies in Europe still warming up to the idea of automation, UiPath is in a prime position to get those businesses and use its software platform to automate businesses and become a major player in the SaaS market.
Darktrace
Darktrace (LON: DARK) is a British-American information technology company specialising in cyber defence. The company was established in 2013 and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company uses AI to interrupt in-progress cyberattacks in seconds and is being used by over 5,500 organisations worldwide to avoid cyber disruptions.
It also announced new product updates recently confirming plans to enter the proactive security market, an area where its AI tools could be better used to detect weaknesses in AI systems before bad actors exploit them. With its robust detection and response technologies and addition of proactive security, Darktrace is a dark horse in the cybersecurity market.
From China
China has set a goal of becoming the world leader in AI by 2030. Its ambitious goal is backed by massive investment, access to a huge pool of data and homegrown tech companies that could turn the ambition into reality. The Chinese stock market has been an opportunity for some time and these Chinese tech giants (AI stocks) are worth following right now.
Tencent
Tencent (HKG: 0700) is a conglomerate that has shown the ability to use its popular platform to expand into new categories. It is the world’s largest video game publisher and is the owner of WeChat messaging platform. With gaming revenues growing and WeChat remaining uber popular in the mainland, Tencent has expanded itself to payment as well with WeChat Pay.
With interests in services such as Tencent Music and Tencent Cloud, Tencent is another major player in China’s vast tech ecosystem. Like others, Tencent also uses AI extensively to build and tailor its services. The fact that WeChat is the only superapp to really work is a testament to its AI platform and ability to integrate services.
Alibaba
Alibaba (HKG: 9988) is an online e-commerce retailer and China’s largest company by market capitalisation. With its firm grip on more than 50 per cent of China’s e-commerce market, Alibaba is a pure play in the consumer AI market. Its subsidiaries such as Taobao retail platform, Alibaba cloud computing company and B2C retailer Tmall allow the company to build AI tools in-house and deploy them across businesses.
Despite regulatory pressure and ongoing supply chain constraints, Alibaba has managed to steer clear of the advertisities and its share price has been increasing steadily. With China’s economy getting back to pre-pandemic levels and consumers using Alibaba platforms, this is one of the AI stocks that everyone should watch right now especially since the price has been far from its peak in 2020.
Baidu
Baidu Inc (HKG: 9888) is a technology and advertising company akin to Google in the West. It specialises in internet services and artificial intelligence and its search engine is the fifth largest website in the world. To expand its AI services, Weibo has become a global player in cloud storage services and has also ventured into the AI smart speaker market.
With Baidu Maps and self-driving vehicle projects, Baidu is really testing the limits of AI technologies that it has developed. If there is one company that could emerge as an eventual leader in China’s tech ecosystem, it could be Baidu with its significant lead in AI technologies for big applications.
DJI
DJI (INDEXDJX: .DJI) is the leader in the drone market and its massive expertise in the segment could make it a major player in the future of aerial mapping. As drones improve in terms of range and their abilities, DJI has been adding new AI capabilities such as depth maps and machine learning to understand their surroundings.
Using its onboard cameras and sensors, DJI’s drones are able to reach greater speeds without compromising on battery life or performance. With unmanned aerial vehicles becoming a huge market for the future of mobility, DJI could emerge as a player ready to capitalise with its consumer and commercial drone expertise.