Artificial Intelligence - Thematic Research

Artificial Intelligence - Thematic Research

Summary

Nearly 70 years since Alan Turing posed the question “Can machines think?”, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is finally beginning to have an impact on the global economy. Proponents of AI believe that it has the potential to transform the world as we know it, with Google’s CEO SundarPichai having described AI as “more profound than…electricity or fire”.

This kind of hype may not be entirely helpful, particularly as AI technology continues to experience growing pains, but it should not obscure the fact that, within five years, AI will be essential to the survival of businesses of all types. In order to succeed, companies must make AI a core competency, as the alternative will be either stagnation or elimination.

AI is still in its infancy, despite the R&D effort that has been expended on it over the years, and in a decade’s time today’s “state of the art” will seem rudimentary and simplistic. Therefore, when looking at potential winners in this theme, it is as important to gauge their ability to innovate over the long-term as it is to evaluate the current state of their AI offerings.

Leading the way with the development of AI technologies are the global technology giants - Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and IBM. Their strength is derived from a combination of factors, including access to huge datasets, essential for training AI systems, and significant amounts of computing power. Over the next few years, these US-headquartered companies will face increasing competition from China’s tech powerhouses, including Baidu and Alibaba.

Companies Mentioned: Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, Salesforce.com, Samsung Electronics, Darktrace, Lemonade, Megvii, Mobvoi, SenseTime, SoundHound.

Scope

This report is part of our ecosystem of thematic investment research reports, supported by our “thematic engine”. About our Thematic Research Ecosystem:

• The author has developed a unique thematic methodology for valuing technology, media and telecom companies based on their relative strength in the big investment themes that are impacting their industry. Whilst most investment research is underpinned by backwards looking company valuation models, the author’s thematic methodology identifies which companies are best placed to succeed in a future filled with multiple disruptive threats. To do this, the author tracks the performance of the top 600 technology, media and telecom stocks against the 50 most important themes driving their earnings, generating 30,000 thematic scores. The algorithms in the author’s “thematic engine” help to clearly identify the winners and losers within the TMT sector. Our 600 TMT stocks are categorised into 18 sectors. Each sector scorecard has a thematic screen, a risk screen and a valuation screen. Our thematic research ecosystem has a three-tiered reporting structure: single theme, multi-theme and sector scorecard. This report is a Multi-Theme report, covering all stocks, all sectors and all themes, giving readers a strong sense of how everything fits together and how conflicting themes might interact with one another.

Reasons to buy

• Our thematic investment research product, supported by our thematic engine, is aimed at senior (C-Suite) executives in the corporate world as well as institutional investors.


• Corporations: Helps CEOs in all industries understand the disruptive threats to their competitive landscape


• Investors: Helps fund managers focus their time on the most interesting investment opportunities in global TMT.


• Our unique differentiator, compared to all our rival thematic research houses, is that our thematic engine has a proven track record of predicting winners and losers.