AI is popular even on Wall Street. A sign of the times, half of the ten companies with the largest capitalization on the New York Stock Exchange at the start of 2024 are leaders in the artificial intelligence sector. Their combined value exceeds US$9 trillion. And it’s not over.
In any case, this is what the Swiss international financial institution UBS noted this week, which already predicted last fall that 2024 would be “the year of AI”. In a note published Wednesday, its analysts believe that AI in general, but especially the technological giants that seem to be establishing themselves in this market, are off to glory.
Huge demand
Citing a survey of 4,700 business leaders and published at the Davos Economic Forum this week, UBS concludes that demand for products integrating generative artificial intelligence applications, a la ChatGPT, will be gigantic over the course of of the next few months.
“Nearly 75% of the 4,700 CEOs surveyed predicted that AI would significantly change their business model,” writes UBS. “We are only in the first inning of this love affair with AI, and the current favorable environment is only propelling the technology a little further. »
UBS is doubly bullish on companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta and even semiconductor maker Nvidia. All four are among the richest companies on the New York Stock Exchange. Microsoft has even just overtaken Apple at the head of the largest market capitalizations, which seemed immovable just three months ago.
On the financial side, these companies are doing very well on the stock market because they have very little debt, their return on invested capital is more than generous, and their profit margin is attractive. This should be enough to attract investors looking for quality stocks, says the Swiss institution.
But there’s more: their investment in AI allows them to generate growing and recurring revenue thanks to a monthly subscription model that is aimed at both businesses and individuals. The example cited is that of Microsoft and its Copilot application. The Redmond giant has just launched a version of its generative AI tool called Copilot Pro which costs $27 per month (US$20) which can automate a host of tasks, ranging from creating documents in its Office suite , including email generation, and which promises to increase the productivity of workers and businesses.
“Income growth [des entreprises comme Microsoft] was already evident at the end of 2023, but we see this trend accelerate in the coming months,” as companies around the world adopt solutions like Copilot, predicts UBS.
Need for change
Rarely have we seen such enthusiasm for a new technology. In Davos this week, the leaders of many companies showed concern for the very survival of their company, if it did not adapt to two major conditions: the need to decarbonize their activities, and the need to automate them further via applications like artificial intelligence.
The firm PwC, which has surveyed participants at the Davos Economic Forum every year for 27 years, calculates that 45% of business leaders present there “expect to experience more pressure over the next three years than they have experienced for five years to adapt to these super trends,” writes the firm.
“CEOs see huge inefficiencies in the routine tasks of their companies — from decision-making to writing emails — and estimate about 40% of the time wasted completing these tasks. »
PwC estimates the value of this lost productivity to be approximately US$10,000 billion. “Generative AI, which is seen by 60% of people surveyed as a way to improve productivity, could help correct part of this problem,” concludes the firm.