AI companies lead the rankings of most valuable firms

Apple Inc. is mostly known for its smart phone and computer business. Apple is a also one of the largest artificial intelligence companies in the world. It is renowned for designing and manufacturing innovative consumer electronics, software, and services, including the iPhone, Mac computers, iPad, or Apple Watch. The company focuses on delivering technology with a strong emphasis on user experience, privacy, and ecosystem integration.

In June 2024, Apple announced “Apple Intelligence,” an artificial intelligence software that incorporates ChatGPT to bring a personal assistant-like feature that integrates into Siri and Writing Tools. These features were initially intended to launch with the upcoming iPhone and iPad 18.0 software overhauls. Other features announced in June were the ability to lock and hide apps and schedule texts to be sent at a future time.

Apple Inc was founded in 1976, it is headquartered in Cupertino (California, USA). Its revenues for the fiscal year 2024 reached almost 400 billion USD, which was 2 percent higher than a year ago. Net income of the Apple company slightly decreased (by 3.36 percent) to 93.74 billion USD. Apple Inc keeps its top position among the most valuable companies in the world, while its market capitalization broke the 3.5 trillion USD level.

Nvidia is an American technology giant that focuses on manufacturing graphics processing units (GPUs), whose computing power has been foundational for several generative AI technologies. The company commands 87 % of the global GPU market and has had a hand in major AI technology advancements, including ChatGPT, which was trained using 10 thousand Nvidia GPUs.

2024 has been a busy year for Nvidia, which has seen significant growth as part of the AI boom. In April 2024, the company announced the acquisition of two Israel-based companies, Run:ai and Deci. In June 2024, the company enacted a 10:1 stock split.

Just a few days after the stock split Nvidia announced its partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise through the Nvidia AI Computing initiative by HPE, which includes a range of AI solutions they have developed together. This initiative aims to help businesses adopt generative AI technologies quickly by providing integrated products and strategies that leverage companies’ expertise and technologies.

Nvidia market capitalization almost tripled during the last 12 months, and it is now the second most valuable company in the world. Nvidia´s revenues increased by more than 125 percent (year-on-year), while the net income growth reached 581 percent. Nvidia was founded in 1993, and is headquartered in Santa Clara (California, USA).

Microsoft has remained a leader in end-user computer technology for nearly four decades and is currently the third most valuable company in the world. Its popular Windows desktop operating system claims approximately 72 percent of the global market share.

With a 10 billion USD investment in OpenAi in January 2023 and subsequent integration of its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot and Dall-E image generation into the Bing search engine and Edge web browsing software, Microsoft has claimed its position as one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies. In June 2024, Microsoft announced a new class of PCs with NPU built into their processors to do more AI tasks without relying on cloud computing. The company’s cloud-computing infrastructure, Azure, has been growing quickly, driven by Azure AI app development.

Microsoft market value increased by 13 percent during the last 12 months, and is one of the three companies with market capitalization above the 3 trillion USD level. Microsoft also increased revenues and net income by two-digit percent over the last year. The former Bill Gates´ company was founded in 1975, and is now headquartered in Redmond (Washington, USA).

Alphabet, or its subsidiary company Google is also one of the technology giants that became a giant several years before the AI entered the technology sector. It is known for a suite of products that extend to many categories in the tech industry, with products that touch on everything from education to advertising and fitness to streaming video. Twenty-five years after the company’s founding, its flagship product remains its eponymous search engine, which reportedly accounts for more than 90 percent of worldwide searches, an average of 8.5 billion searches per day. Google and its parent company, Alphabet, expanded into AI and deep learning by forming its Google AI division in 2017.

In 2023, the company announced Bard, an AI chatbot designed to compete with Microsoft’s integration of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. However, the release was slightly marred by reported internal disapproval of the product’s rollout. In May 2024, Google released its latest AI feature, AI Overviews, to everyone using their search engine. The AI Overview seeks to provide more in-depth answers to users’ questions before they even click through to an article listed with search results.

Alphabet was founded in 1998, and is headquartered in Mountain View (California, USA). Its market capitalization increased by almost 30 percent, its revenue increased by nearly 9 percent, and net income grew by more than 23 percent (year-on-year).

Meta Platforms (formerly known as Facebook) has grown to a vast user base, with 3.14 billion people interacting with one of their platforms daily. The company is known for its social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Oculus. While the company has faced criticism about privacy concerns since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, misinformation spread across platforms, and general antitrust concerns, Meta has made strides to increase transparency in the past year, especially regarding its ad targeting to users.
Meta has shifted much of its focus to becoming one of the largest AI development companies in social media and the web. In February 2024, Meta announced its efforts to draw the line between reality and AI-generated imagery and videos on its platforms. The move will notify users when photorealistic content has been AI-generated.

In June 2024, Meta announced plans to introduce free artificial intelligence chatbots on its messaging platform WhatsApp as a strategy to monetize. It is also in the process of developing multilingual Meta AI for Facebook and Instagram.

Meta Platforms market capitalization now equals to 1.45 trillion USD and increased by more than ¾ over the last 12 months. Its revenues increased by more than 15 percent and net income by nearly 70 percent year-on-year. Meta (Facebook) was founded in 2004, and it is headquartered in Menlo Park (California, USA).