It’s no secret that the era of artificial intelligence (AI) is officially here and that large tech names like Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), Facebook (FB) and Amazon (AMZN) are all investing heavily in the space to boost their businesses. These early adopters of a technology that’s expected to have a significant impact on product offerings in the next few years, are concentrating their efforts in analytics expertise, sophisticated deep-learning algorithms and quality data-which is the fuel that drives AI.
While the amount of spending outside of big tech remains minimal so far, AI market projections are for a growth of nearly $190 billion by 2025 from $21.5 billion in 2018. And as if that figure isn’t impressive enough, the space is expected to add more than $15.6 trillion to the global GDP by fiscal 2030.
It goes without saying that AI is at a very early stage in its development and companies that will incorporate this area of computer science into both their offerings and internal processes can achieve explosive growth. Keep in mind, complex AI-empowered systems are expected to radically change the competitive landscape of entire industries in the next five years.
Here are some publicly traded companies forging ahead in AI technology.
– NVIDIA Corporation
Location: Santa Clara, California.
Market Cap: $108.8 Billion
Founded in 1993 – Stock Symbol: (NASDAQ:NVDA).
Price Action
Nvidia’s stock was up 1.30% to $179.56 in Friday’s Nasdaq session. The name is down nearly 20% year-over-year versus the S&P 500’s 9.05% gain. NVDA currently trades at 25x forward earnings.
How it’s using AI: Nvidia Corp. operates in two segments, graphics processing unit, or GPUs, and Tegra Processor– the most powerful tablet-form factor chip in the market today. Nvidia’s AI chips are also used in cloud computing ; tech giants like Google and Facebook use Nvidia’s platform to power the AI features on their platforms. An increasing number of self-driving customers including Audi, Mercedes Benz, Toyota and Tesla (TSLA) are also using Nvidia DRIVE car technology to teach self-driving cars to see, think, and learn.
Nvidia believes, “AI will spur a wave of social progress unmatched since the industrial revolution.”
– Splunk Inc.
Location: San Francisco, California.
Market Cap: $18.7 Billion
Incorporated in 2003 – Stock Symbol: (NASDAQ:SPLK).
Price Action
Splunk shares have traded in the last 52 weeks as high as $143.70 and as low as $83.69. They rose 2.27% to the equivalent of $124.60 at 3:50 p.m. New York time Friday in US trading. EPS growth in the last three years prints at 110 percent.
How it’s using AI: The strength of Splunk’s AI platform lies in its ability to deal with unstructured data for IT and security. Using machine learning, the company’s IT Service Intelligence (ITS), a monitoring and analytics solution that combines big data and AI functionality, detects, flags and prevents possible anomalies before they impact revenue and customer experience. ITS also makes predictions giving organizations visibility across IT and business services and applications.
– Salesforce.com, inc.
Location: San Francisco, California.
Market Cap: $122.10 Billion
Founded in 1999 – Stock Symbol: (NYSE:CRM).
Price Action
Salesforce’s stock was trading up by 2.06% at $158.37 at the time of publication. Shares are up 33% year-over-year versus the S&P 500’s 9% return. Ticker currently trades at 46x forward 12-month EPS estimates. Trailing-12 P/E prints above 110x.
How it’s using AI: Salesforce was a cloud-based software firm before “the cloud” was even a tech jargon. The company, which pioneered the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, develops personalized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and tools. It currently dominates 20% of that market ; a dominance that is the direct result of Salesforce’s platform Einstein AI, Salesforce Customer 360, and Salesforce Lightning platforms.
According to the company’s published 4Q and FY 2019 (ended January 2019) results, Einstein AI, after using of all the data in Salesforce—customer data, can deliver more than 6 billion predictions every day.
Einstein AI is still relatively young. Salesforce first launched the technology in Sept. 2016.
– Five9, Inc.
Location: San Ramon, California.
Market Cap: $3.13 Billion
Founded in 2001 – Stock Symbol: (NASDAQ:FIVN).
Price Action
Shares of the company, which have spiked nearly 84% year-over-year and more than 600% since going public in 2014, lost less than 1% to close at $52.83 per share on Friday.
How it’s using AI: A provider of cloud software for contact centers, Five9 is developing a self-learning AI contact center platform, such as the Five9 Genius, that delivers intelligent routing using non pre-defined data models from a number of information channels to derive customer intent. Five9 currently claims more than 2,000 customers worldwide and over 3 billion customer interactions annually. The company announced last year a partnership with search giant Google on AI contact center software.
Others top AI names to keep an eye on include Micron Technology (MU), Synopsys (SNPS), Trade Desk (TTD) and companies like Intel (INTC) that’s aiming to grab shares from the specialized semiconductor firm Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in the AI-driven, discrete graphics card market.
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