According to a study presented at a European Central Bank conference, companies that manage to survive the upheaval caused by the adoption of artificial intelligence will eventually leverage AI to help them thrive in the longer run. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and surveys covering the period between 2017 and 2021, authors of the study found that companies that had adopted AI early on in the manufacturing sector saw their productivity drop after they replaced human workers with robots.
These findings are undoubtedly against the notion that technology, particularly AI, makes work more productive. However, Kristina McElheran, one of the authors of the paper, highlighted how there is a lot of pain in the short run. This pain, particularly the drop in productivity, has been due to the interference of AI with manufacturers’ established practices, such as keeping low inventories. Over time, these firms begin to outperform in all areas, including sales, productivity, and employment, as noted in the study.
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While traditional companies are rushing to adopt AI in their operations, artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI are in turn racing to advance AI research and enhance their tools. Last Monday, the company said it would it would raise $40 billion in a new funding round led by SoftBank Group at a $300 billion valuation. While the firm has agreed to fund OpenAI with $10 billion in mid-April and an additional $30 billion in December, it has done so on the condition that OpenAI will transition to for-profit by the end of the year.
In the case that OpenAI’s restructuring fails, the tech investment group’s investment will drop to $20 billion. With the firm having closed a $6.6 billion funding round in October, the new funding will nearly double the valuation of the AI startup.
“OpenAI has very ambitious plans on many fronts and needs a lot of capital to achieve these goals. The list of investors wanting to support that scope has shrunk and may be largely limited to Soft Bank, which itself may not have the necessary capital.”
– D.A. Davidson & Co analyst Gil Luria.
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. The hedge fund data is as of Q4 2024.
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10. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 60
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is a multinational technology company and a pioneer in artificial intelligence, offering AI consulting services and a suite of AI software products. On March 31, the company announced the availability of Intel® Gaudi® 3 AI accelerators on IBM Cloud at Intel Vision 2025. Intel Gaudi 3 will be available in a public cloud environment for production workloads. The collaboration will enable IBM Cloud to help clients cost-effectively scale and deploy enterprise AI. Currently, Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerators on IBM Cloud are available in Frankfurt (eu-de) and Washington, D.C. (us-east) IBM Cloud regions.
“By bringing Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerators to IBM Cloud, we’re enabling businesses to help scale generative AI workloads with optimized performance for inferencing and fine-tuning. This collaboration underscores our shared commitment to making AI more accessible and cost-effective for enterprises worldwide.”
-Saurabh Kulkarni, Vice President, Datacenter AI Strategy and Product Management, Intel.
9. Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 63
Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) is a leading provider of artificial intelligence systems. On April 1, Daiwa initiated coverage of the stock with a “Neutral” rating and $90 price target. With generative AI inference software taking hold at an accelerated pace, the firm believes that Palantir has “remarkably achieved success” in applying the technology to manufacturing. However, there are concerns regarding the sustainability of the stock due to its “excessively high valuations.”
