Our early-adopters index examines how corporate America is deploying AI
Technology stocks are having a bumper year. Despite a recent wobble, the share price of the Big Five—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft—has jumped by 60% since January, when measured in an equally weighted basket (see chart 1). The price of shares in one big chipmaker, Nvidia, has tripled and in another, AMD, almost doubled. Their price-to-earnings ratios (which measures how much the markets think a company is worth relative to its profits) are ten times that of the median firm in the s&p 500.
Beyond tech, two types of firms seem to be adopting ai the quickest. One is data-intensive industries, such as insurers, financial-services firms and health-care providers. They account for about a quarter of our top 100. These firms tend to have lots of structured datasets, such as loan books or patient files, which makes it easier to use AI, notes Ali Ghodsi of Databricks, a database firm. Around a tenth of JPMorgan Chase’s current job listings mention AI. The firm recently filed a patent for “Indexgpt”, an AI-infused chatbot that gives investment advice. Health-care firms like Gilead Sciences and Moderna use AI to discover new drugs. Others, such as Abbott Laboratories and Align Technology, build AI-powered medical devices. America’s Food and Drug Administration approved 97 such machines last year, up from 26 in 2017.
A second group is industries that are already being disrupted by technology, including carmakers, telecoms, media and retail. Thirteen firms from these industries make the high-scoring 100, including Ford, GM and Tesla. The rise of electric vehicles and the prospect of self-driving cars has encouraged vehicle manufacturers to invest in technology. In March Ford established Latitude AI, a self-driving car subsidiary that might one day rival gm’s Cruise. In April Elon Musk told analysts that Tesla was buying up specialised AI chips and was “very focused” on…
2023-06-25 13:49:27
Link from www.economist.com