The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT created a major buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) stocks.
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot software application that uses machine learning techniques to emulate human-written conversations. A hitherto niche subsector in the AI industry, this technology is called generative AI, and it’s been making an impact on myriad industries, including marketing, security, healthcare, gaming, communication, customer service and software development.
While generative AI technology is in its early stages, Reid Menge, co-portfolio manager for the BlackRock Technology Opportunities Fund, sees immense potential.
“ChatGPT is nearly as smart as the human brain today,” he said, “and with the computational horsepower being used to train these AI models, imagine the capabilities of these generative AI services by 2025.”
According to Fortune Business Insights, the generative AI market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 39.6 percent between 2024 and 2032 to reach an impressive US$967.65 billion.
Although investors can’t directly take a position in privately owned OpenAI, several technology stocks offer exposure to the expected growth in generative AI technology.
All market cap and share price data were current as of October 23, 2024.
Biggest generative AI stocks to watch
These 12 tech giants offer investors exposure to generative AI by offering their own chatbots and generative AI products, developing the hardware and software necessary for AI and integrating AI into their product.
1. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Market cap: US$3.51 trillion
Current share price: US$230.76
Apple is increasingly incorporating AI into its products such as its virtual assistant Siri, and health and fitness tracking apps. The company’s approach to AI — Apple Intelligence — emphasizes privacy by building devices that can perform AI tasks directly on the device using their A17 and A18 silicon chips.
Its newest iPhone 16, which launched in September 2024, comes with AI features like writing assistance and intelligent photo features built into the hardware of the device. The new iPad mini, which was released on October 23, was also designed to support Apple Intelligence.
2. NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Market cap: US$3.42 trillion
Current share price: US$139.56
Nvidia is a pioneer and global leader in graphics processing unit (GPU) technology. Nvidia designs specialized chips used to train AI and machine learning models. The company also offers supercomputing processing capabilities to scientific researchers around the world.
While its been well known in computer and gaming spaces for a long time, its focus on the AI sector has been driving its growth in recent years. Nvidia’s market value has grown by 135 percent year-over-year and at one point the company even took the title of world’s most valuable company from rivals Microsoft and Apple.
Generative AI’s explosive growth is driving the market for chips designed by companies like Nvidia and Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL), another chip-making giant, and Micron (NASDAQ:MU), a company that makes memory chips, which are another important component to training generative AI systems.
3. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Market cap: US$3.16 trillion
Current share price: US$424.60
After having initially invested at least US$3 billion in OpenAI a few years ago, the technology behemoth Microsoft reportedly committed to investing up to another US$10 billion in the chatbot creator in the years ahead. The company also participated in OpenAI’s latest funding round on October 2.
Microsoft built its own AI solutions, Bing AI and Copilot, based on OpenAI’s technology. Bing is integrated into Windows 11’s taskbar, allowing users to query the chatbot directly with Microsoft’s Edge browser, Chrome and Safari. The company also recently partnered with Palantir to provide AI tools to US defense and intelligence agencies.
4. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)
Market cap: US$2.01 trillion
Current share price: US$164.48
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has played an important role in advancing generative AI technology. Its latest AI model, Gemini, is available in three sizes — Nano, Pro and Ultra — to meet various levels of user needs. According to the company, Gemini is ‘able to efficiently run on everything from data centers to mobile devices.’
Alphabet is leveraging generative AI across its business segments. Its AI accelerator chip, TPU v5p, was developed for neural network machine learning and is designed to scale large clusters, reducing the time needed to train large language models. Alphabet’s subsidiary, DeepMind, focuses on AI research and development. Its AI system, AlphaFold, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on October 9 for its ability to predict the structure of proteins based on a protein’s unique amino acid sequence.
5. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Market cap: US$1.94 trillion
Current share price: US$184.71
Amazon subsidiary and cloud-computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) evolved out of Amazon’s transition from an online retailer to one of the world’s largest technology companies. AWS’s wide range of services includes computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and AI.
AWS has many AI business tools on offer across four verticals: AI services, AI platforms, AI frameworks and AI infrastructure. Generative AI is nothing new to Amazon, as the technology forms the basis of conversational experiences with Amazon’s all-too-familiar Alexa.
Last year, AWS introduced Bedrock, a service that enhances software with generative AI capabilities such as turning text into images or creating text for blog posts, emails and documents. The company has since added more features to the service, including a custom model import feature that allows customers to bring their own models to the Bedrock platform.
6. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)
Market cap: US$1.43 trillion
Current share price: US$563.69
Meta has expressed its commitment to continued research within the generative AI sphere with an open-source approach to its software developments. The giant behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is one of the most influential companies in tech, sharing ranks with the likes of Microsoft and Alphabet.
In April 2024, Meta introduced its Meta AI, which is built with Meta Llama 3. The AI is integrated into Meta’s apps and also exists as a standalone website.
Meta’s products use machine learning to streamline Facebook ad campaign generation and help businesses reach the right consumers. Its Q2 2024 quarterly report showed a 21.7 percent increase in ad revenue compared to last year.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has maintained that increased spending on AI infrastructure is necessary to maintain its competitive position. The company has been implementing cost-saving measures to offset these investments and balance the financial impacts of its AI initiatives.
7. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA)
Market cap: US$682.55 billion
Current share price: US$213.65
The automotive company that brought self-driving cars out of sci-fi and into reality is now on a mission to develop advanced, generative autonomous vehicles using the massive amounts of data collected from its cars. One of Tesla’s goals is to develop a fully self-driving vehicle, but the company is also working on other AI initiatives like a bi-pedal autonomous Tesla Bot.
While the roll-out of Tesla’s self-driving technology has run into issues in the US, it was given the green light to begin testing the software in a pilot program in Shanghai on June 14. In July 2023, the company said it was spending ‘north of a billion dollars’ from mid-2023 until the end of 2024 on Dojo, a supercomputer that collects the data and uses it to train generative AI models that Tesla vehicles use to operate.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk created a separate AI company called xAI, formed with the intent of using generative AI to ‘understand the meaning of the universe.’ It is currently working on a large language model called Grok that can ‘answer almost anything’ and even prompt users to ask specific questions. Musk suggested Tesla could invest in xAI and use Grok, but this would need to be approved by Tesla’s board and could be a conflict of interest.
8. Oracle (NYSE:ORCL)
Market cap: US$479.67 billion
Current share price: US$173.10
Oracle is a tech company that’s been around since the 1970s. In the early 2000s, it began buying up other software companies, and today it is one of the leading providers of cloud-based database management software. Its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI service was released on January 23.
The software uses Cohere’s platform to allow businesses to incorporate large language models into software they’re already using. Oracle has been involved in a long-term partnership agreement with Nvidia to provide generative AI solutions to complex issues. At the Oracle CloudWorld conference on September 11, Oracle announced the first supercomputer to reach ‘zettascale’ performance, capable of 1 billion trillion calculations per second. The buildout will use as many as 131,072 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs.
9. SAP (NYSE:SAP)
Market cap: US$271.27 billion
Current share price: US$234.59
SAP is a software company out of Walldorf, Germany, with a line of generative AI products that aid companies in resource planning. In September 2023, the company released Joule, a natural language generative AI assistant designed to streamline tasks and improve workflow. Joule is available in SAP’s complete cloud portfolio and can be seamlessly integrated into the company’s entire line of business AI offerings.
To further research how cloud technology can support AI applications, SAP has been collaborating with UC Berkley’s Sky Computing Lab. The company was also recently recognized as one of the world’s most sustainable companies in 2024 by TIME Magazine and data firm Statista.
On September 12, SAP acquired WalkMe, a software company that provides a digital adoption platform that provides step-by-step instructions for an application.
10. Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO)
Market cap: US$224.33 billion
Current share price: US$56.28
Multinational digital communications firm Cisco Systems is a leader in IT and communications networks. The company has a large portfolio of multi-cloud products and applications, alongside strong relationships with Azure, AWS, Nvidia and Google Cloud.
Cisco’s AI and machine learning offerings encompass a wide range of computing solutions for enterprises, including a focus on cybersecurity. Cisco has also brought to market new generative AI tools for IT professionals, including its own AI Assistant.
11. Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE)
Market cap: US$213.51 billion
Current share price: US$485.03
Adobe has a suite of design software that makes up its Creative Cloud platform and began rolling out AI-powered software with machine-learning capabilities in 2022. In March 2023, the company launched its generative AI iteration, Adobe Sensei GenAI, which features a list of services designed to improve marketing and content creation workflows. The AI tool is now part of its Adobe Experience Cloud.
In March 2024, Adobe and Microsoft joined forces to merge Adobe’s Experience Manager Sites capabilities with Microsoft Copilot, enabling users to harness the power of Adobe Firefly generative AI directly within Microsoft Word. In June, Adobe and TikTok signed an agreement to add TikTok’s music to Adobe Express and give TikTok users access to Adobe’s Symphony Assistant which uses AI to aid the creative process.
12. IBM (NYSE:IBM)
Market cap: US$214.4 billion
Current share price: US$232.75
IBM reportedly has one of the world’s largest AI research programs. The multinational tech company offers various AI solutions for cloud computing, IT operations, customer service, business automation, natural language processing and more. The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, a collaborative effort between the two establishments, works to advance research in healthcare, security and finance.
On September 4, the company sold its IBM QRadar SaaS assets to cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ:PANW). IBM has also been working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to build tools capable of defending AI models from cyberattacks.
Other generative AI stocks to watch
The following companies have not yet reached the market capitalization of our top 12, but are each worth billions of dollars and have made some amazing achievements in generative AI technology in their own right, making them interesting prospects for investors.
In alphabetical order, they are:
FAQs for generative AI
What is generative AI?
Generative AI is an emerging AI technology based on deep learning models and algorithms that can generate text, images or sounds in response to prompts given by users.
What are generative AI examples?
Some of the most notable examples of generative AI are ChatGPT, DALL-E 2, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Gemini and Copilot.
OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 is an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. Similar to DALL-E 2, Midjourney generates images from prompts. Stable Diffusion is a latent text-to-image diffusion model capable of generating photo-realistic images given any text input. Microsoft’s Copilot is a feature of the Bing search engine that leverages the same technology as ChatGPT.
What are the hottest generative AI startups?
According to technology and business magazine e-Week, in addition to ChatGPT creator OpenAI, some of the other leading generative AI startups include Hugging Face, Synthesis AI, Jasper and Cohere.
Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.