Artificial Intelligence developments are making headlines across various sectors. From high-profile legal battles to groundbreaking advancements in model performance and safety protocols, AI is reshaping the landscape across industries at an unprecedented pace.
READ ALSO: 15 AI News Investors Should Not Miss and 20 Trending AI Stocks on Latest News and Ratings
Before we move on to the breaking news on AI, let’s talk about Morningstar’s recent report. The investment research firm reveals that for the third consecutive year, investors are leaving exchange-traded funds related to specific themes for funds linked to broad stock-market benchmarks “that are hitting record highs”. Despite overall growth in equity ETFs, thematic ETFs have lost $5.8 billion in investor capital in the year 2024. This is greater than $4.8 billion outflows in all of 2023. The reason? Broad market index returns are setting a higher bar for thematic funds this year.
“It’s not that people don’t like the idea of themes any longer, but that a bull market dominated by a handful of megacaps makes it hard for any theme to stand out”.
-Aniket Ullal, ETF analyst at CFRA, a market research firm.
As per Morningstar, thematic ETFs often struggle due to mistimed investments, with investors usually missing out on two-thirds of their returns. Despite some AI-themed funds having strong holdings, higher fees and timing challenges reduce their overall appeal.
“I think that when S&P 500 megacaps stop delivering the way they do today, the focus will shift back to thematic ETFs”.
-Taylor Krystkowiak, investment strategist at Themes ETFs, an investment management firm.
Moreover, while AI remains a key focus in many thematic ETFs, its impact goes far beyond investing. Consider Penguin Random House, the first of the Big Five anglophone trade publishers to amend its copyright information. The publisher has recently added a language to its copyright pages to prohibit the use of those books to train AI. Publishers and AI firms will be increasingly clashing in the future if clear guidelines and processes aren’t kept in place. In a similar endeavor, The New York Times has sent Perplexity AI, an AI-powered research firm, a “cease and desist” notice demanding that it stop using the newspaper’s content for generative AI purposes. The news publisher claims that the way the AI Company uses its material violates copyright law.
In other news, Anthropic, a U.S.-based artificial intelligence public-benefit startup, is now adding a comprehensive update to its safety policy, reinforcing the guardrails of its AI as it becomes more capable. This push to improve AI safety is in stark contrast to competitors such as OpenAI, whose increasing focus on improving capabilities and performance is very likely to threaten safety guidelines in the future. As per McKinsey, 63% of companies consider inaccuracy risk to be relevant. However, only 38% of companies are working to mitigate the risk.
While artificial intelligence may be intimidating, it is equally, if not more, beneficial for mankind. In its latest achievement, AI has helped UCLA researchers develop a deep-learning framework that teaches itself to automatically analyze and diagnose MRIs and other 3D medical images. That too, with the accuracy matching that of medical specialists in a fraction of the time. Another breakthrough from Archetype AI, a physical AI company, is set to significantly change how we understand and interact with the physical world. The model, named Newton, shows the unparalleled capacity to generalize across diverse physical phenomena using only raw sensor measurements as input.
Finally, in our roundup of the latest AI news, the US rules that will ban certain US investments in artificial intelligence in China are under final review, as per a government posting. The rules, requiring US investors to notify the Treasury Department regarding some investments in AI and other stem technologies, come from an executive order signed by President Joe Biden in August 2023. The order aims to keep American investors’ know-how from aiding China’s military. Chipmakers and related companies that may be impacted by the decisions denied responding to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Methodology
For this article, we selected AI stocks by combing through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among 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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
15. Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ:NBIS)
Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ:NBIS) is a technology company offering infrastructure and services for AI builders worldwide. One of its businesses is Nebius, an AI-centric cloud platform built for intensive AI workloads.
On Monday, October 21, AI infrastructure firm Nebius Group N.V. (NASDAQ:NBIS) resumed trading on the NASDAQ after its suspension in February 2022. The firm was previously held by Yandex, often dubbed “Russia’s Google”, whose trading was suspended after Russia invaded Ukraine. Nebius emerged in July following a $5.4 billion deal to split Yandex’s Russian and international assets.
“We are at the very beginning of the AI revolution. Nobody can be sure which business models or underlying technologies will prevail, but we can be sure of one thing: the demand for AI infrastructure will be massive and sustained”.
– Nebius Chairman John Boynton.
CEO Arkady Volozh is optimistic on the company’s prospects, citing strong growth over the coming years, and deeming computational power as key. The company expects to deploy more than 20,000 graphics processing units at its Finnish data center by year-end. It also expects its addressable market – GPU-as-a-service and AI cloud – to grow to more than $260 billion in 2030 from $33 billion in 2023.
14. Oklo Inc. (NYSE:OKLO)
Oklo Inc. (NYSE:OKLO) is a nuclear technology company engaged in the design and development of fission power plants to provide reliable and commercial-scale energy to customers in the United States. AI has been driving significant energy demand, and nuclear energy has emerged as a strong avenue to address the increase in power demand.
Last week, Amazon Web Services announced plans that it will invest $500 million in nuclear power. Big tech companies are increasingly facing energy demands driven by the AI revolution, and many of them have already entered into agreements to meet their energy needs. Following the announcement, nuclear names such as Oklo Inc. (NYSE:OKLO) continued to rise on Monday on the back of optimism in the sector. There is also increased speculation that Sam Altman’s backed Oklo Inc. (NYSE:OKLO) will be the next one to secure a deal with a major tech player.
In a CNBC interview last week, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte stated the massive demand for power is being driven by AI growth. When asked about the potential for the company to announce a deal similar to Google’s deal with Kairos Power, he stated that there is “a lot more to come”. Oklo shares closed on Monday with a 22.4% increase, reaching $22.32.
