Share prices in the tech industry have rocketed since the successful launch of the AI Chatbot, ChatGPT in November last year. OpenAI created ChatGPT, but they don’t profit from the programme yet because its currently free to use.
The people making billions of dollars from AI are big tech giants such as Microsoft and tech production companies such as Nvidia. We’ll take a closer look at the biggest financial winners in the AI industry below.
The Biggest Winners
Nvidia is an American multinational technology company based in Santa Clara, California, and they seem to be the biggest winner to date.
Quartz reported that the CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang had a 98% rise in his fortune, raising it to $27.3bn (£21.6bn), making him the 44th wealthiest man in the world.
Nvidia is a high-end chip maker and provides processing power to run advanced AI systems. Nvidia’s stock price has risen 114% in the past year and is poised to be the best-performing stock in 2023.
Microsoft is also a massive winner from the success of AI – they have invested billions into OpenAI, since 2019, including $10bn (£8bn) shortly after the launch of ChatGPT.
According to Artificial Corner, Microsoft invested in OpenAI and established a multi-year partnership when it was still a research lab founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, among others.
At that point, OpenAI could only win video games and generate text, but it seems Microsoft could see its true potential.
Microsoft has since incorporated ChatGPT into their search engine, Bing, increasing their market share, and Microsoft Azure is the exclusive cloud source provider for ChatGPT.
Microsoft expects rising profits from their investment and will also have a more competitive place in the market by utilizing the technology.
Other Beneficiaries
US news reported that as of May 17th, the top 5 AI stock companies are Microsoft, Alphabet Inc, Nvidia Corp, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, and Meta platforms Inc.
Alphabet is the parent company of Google, YouTube and DeepMind – they use AI automation across the company and released the AI Chatbot Bard in March. Google also announced last month that it was poised to launch an AI-revamped search engine.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is another company that has gained a lot with the success of AI. They are the world’s largest semiconductor foundry and produce the most advanced AI chips.
Reuters reports that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, exceeded its financial expectations in the first annual quarter. It was the first profit and revenue increase in over a year and was thanks, in part, to investing in AI.
The Financial Potential of AI
ChatGPT is currently free, but the running costs are astronomical – so it won’t be free forever. PC Guide reports that OpenAI began as a not-for-profit organization but has transitioned to a capped-profit company.
OpenAI recently released a subscription plan called ChatGPT Plus. Subscribers will get priority access to the chatbot, faster response times and priority access to new features for $20 (£16) a month.
Financial predictions for OpenAI are looking good. In December, Reuters reported that the company expects to generate $200m (£160m) in revenue in 2023 and $1bn (£803m) in 2024.
The information was from third-party sources. OpenAI won’t comment directly on their profit expectations – they say their focus is on advancing AI safely for humanity.
