Just how rich are businesses getting in the AI gold rush?

BARELY a day goes by without excitement about artificial intelligence (AI) sending another company’s market value through the roof.

Earlier this month, the share price of Dell, a hardware manufacturer, jumped by over 30 per cent in a day because of hopes that the technology will boost sales. Days later, Together AI, a cloud-computing startup, raised new funding at a valuation of US$1.3 billion, up from US$500 million in November. One of its investors is Nvidia, a maker of AI chips that is itself on an extended bull run.

Before the launch of ChatGPT, a “generative” AI that responds to queries in uncannily human-like ways, in November 2022, its market capitalisation was about US$300 billion, similar to that of Home Depot, a home-improvement chain. Today it sits at US$2.3 trillion, US$300 billion or so short of Apple’s.