Is artificial intelligence about to fail? If so, how will this impact major AI players like Nvidia and others?
Just a few years ago, Nvidia
NVDA
AI was struggling like many other new players. Today, its explosive growth has propelled it to the top. However, over time, AI has grown in fits and starts. So what can we expect next?
As an industry analyst, I have been following sectors such as wireless, telecommunications and new technologies like AI for decades, advising them on the direction the industry is taking.
Most investors don’t realize it, but AI has been a part of our society for decades now. There have been periods of great momentum and rapid growth, but most have not. We called the quieter periods “AI winter.” Then things picked up again. This has happened time and time again.
Remember IBM’s Watson?
Let me give you an example. You remember IBM Watson. Watson was AI before the world used the term AI. Watson burst onto the scene as a contestant on the game show “Jeopardy.” Development of the game had begun years ago. After that introduction, Watson seemed to experience meteoric growth for years.
A few years later, I attended the IBM World of Watson event in Las Vegas in 2016. I think that was the peak of interest in Watson. However, as exciting as it was, things quickly went downhill over the years. Today, we don’t think about IBM anymore
IBM
as an AI leader. That was IBM’s mistake.
They didn’t talk about artificial intelligence. They talked about Watson. Today, they’re paying the price because the growth wave continued without them. Today, we’re talking about artificial intelligence… not the name of a company to designate this technology.
A year and a half ago, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. It was a huge surprise. All the pent-up demand kickstarted a new wave of growth. Since then, it seems like many big brand companies and many smaller companies also see their future in a wide variety of AI technologies.
Seeing what happened to IBM and knowing that AI has gone through wave after wave of meteoric growth, AI winter leads some industry insiders to believe that today’s growth journey is just part of that cycle of ups and downs over time.
Billions of dollars invested by companies in AI
It is true that artificial intelligence has grown faster than ever before. Today, billions and billions of dollars are being invested by companies to bring them into the future of artificial intelligence.
Let me start by saying that I believe the future of AI is real. It’s not going away. However, I don’t know if we’re going to continue to see ups and downs in growth or if we’re past the point of no return and investment will continue. We’re all going to have to keep our eyes peeled for what’s ahead.
In the meantime, there are many big, well-known companies in the AI space, as well as countless smaller companies. They all need to be seen and heard. It’s easier for the big players and very difficult for the smaller ones.
The reason is that small businesses are struggling to get their name out there and be heard in a constantly changing industry, driven by news from bigger players. According to McKinsey & Company, 55% of businesses and organizations have already started adopting AI technology.
The good news is that AI still has considerable growth potential. The only question is how quickly this change will occur.
AI companies to watch
Clearly, two leaders in the field of AI are OpenAI And NVIDIA which have been responsible for such great recent growth.
Additionally, large and small companies like Google
GOOG
or Alphabet, Amazon and AWS
AMZN
Apple
AAPL
Microsoft
MSFT
IBM, Meta
META
Oracle
ORCL
Anthropique, C3.ai, Baidu, Databricks, H2O.ai, Salesforce
CRM
AI Synthesis, Tesla
TSLA
Adobe
ADBE
Alibaba
BABA
Intel
INTC
Darktrace and many others.
And then there is xAI, Cohere, CoreWeave, Xaira Therapeutics, Figure AI, Cyera, Augment, Glean, Cognition AI, Celestrial AI, Perplexity AI
That being said, there are countless small and medium-sized businesses that have greater growth potential. I have interviewed and spoken with many of them. You can read more about them in this column.
Learn more: How AI and 5G Impact Every Business and Industry
