We recently published a list of 11 AI News Updates Investors Should Not Miss. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Accenture Plc (NYSE:ACN) stands against other AI news updates investors should not miss.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the job market in ways not seen or heard before. Right from creating new roles in AI development, data analysis, and related fields, it’s also accelerating the automation of routine tasks and leading to job displacement in certain sectors, necessitating workforce adaptation and reskilling.
According to McKinsey Research, corporate use cases of AI could result in an additional $4.4 trillion in productivity gains over the long run. While AI has enormous long-term potential, its immediate benefits are uncertain. Nevertheless, 92% of businesses intend to boost their investments in AI over the next three years.
A good chunk of the investment is going towards recruiting and poaching talent with advanced AI skills that could be of great benefit to the business. As businesses in almost every sector adapt their hiring processes to adopt the technology, data from job ads indicates that roughly one in four U.S. IT jobs listed are for workers with artificial intelligence expertise.
Similarly, AI accounted for 36% of IT positions listed in January in the information sector, including many tech companies making significant investments in AI development and deployment. Businesses in the professional services and financial sectors, including banks and consulting firms, seek IT personnel with experience developing or utilizing AI models and algorithms.
Open IT positions are becoming more and more AI-focused in sectors that comprise a smaller portion of the tech-hiring landscape. For instance, just a small percentage of healthcare job posts are tech-related, but the proportion of new tech positions in January that dealt with AI was almost double that of a few years prior.
According to Thomas Vick, senior regional director at recruiting company Robert Half, employers are mostly seeking someone with expertise or experience integrating AI into existing positions. Between the end of last year and the release of ChatGPT in the fourth quarter of 2022, new AI-related jobs increased by 68%, while tech postings decreased by 27%, affirming how advanced technology is changing the employment landscape.
Our Methodology
For this article, we selected AI stocks by going through news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. These stocks are also popular among hedge funds in Q4 2024.
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) is an information technology service company specializing in consulting, technology, and outsourcing. It helps clients across various industries improve efficiency, adopt innovative technologies, and achieve digital transformation. It also assists businesses in leveraging AI and data for reinvention, offering AI services, solutions, and consulting. On March 11, the company confirmed it had reached an agreement to acquire Soben, a global provider of construction and consultancy services.
The acquisition strengthens Accenture Plc’s (NYSE:ACN) prospects of targeting opportunities in the data center construction consultancy market amid the artificial intelligence boom. Soben is a perfect fit as it works for leading global hyperscalers and co-location providers on major data centre construction. Consequently, it should benefit from the AI infrastructure build-out, which is expected to continue for years.
“The market for capital projects and especially data centers is growing rapidly, driven by ever-higher demand for cloud computing and AI and exponential data growth,” said Steve Roberts, senior managing director, Accenture Industry X. “Hyperscalers and co-location companies are under tremendous pressure to deliver on this demand. They need a provider that brings data center expertise plus proven capital projects experience, which is what the combination of Soben and Accenture, will stand for.”
Overall, ACN ranks 2nd on our list of AI news updates investors should not miss. 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.
