Buying the A.I. Boom

Eleven A.I. stocks and four funds that stand to generate returns for investors.

- LUCY BREWSTER

WHEN IT COMES TO A.I., investors have a torturous choice to make: Believe the hype and jump in headfirst, or ignore the hype and potentially miss out on a once-in-a-generation tech transformation. "It's the early days in terms of picking winners and losers" of the A.I. boom, explained Scott Helfstein, head of thematic solutions at Global X ETFs. "We're not sure yet of the different ways that we're going to be able to monetize this technology. Some are obvious, and some are not obvious and it might be that the ones that are not obvious become more important over time," he said. According to analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers, A.I. could add up to $15.7 trillion in global GDP in 2030, which is more than the current output from India and China combined.

But experts caution that investing in generative A.I. is far more nuanced than just buying Big Tech stocks that have integrated the technology. "This could be another one of those moments where we're getting to the peak of the hype cycle, so companies are going to spend the money, but they're going to find it's a lot harder to build something truly compelling," explained Peter Cohan, business professor at Babson College. "Microsoft has a big investment in OpenAI, and they also have GitHub, which has a lot of the software that can be used for developing A.I., yet I still don't know if that's going to generate enough revenue for Microsoft for A.I. itself to become a significant part of its business," he noted.