And everyone’s calling Nvidia the “most well-established AI stock.” Established? It’s barely been around! It’s like saying your sourdough starter is “established” after two weeks. It’s just…not. And now it’s the most valuable publicly traded company? It’s all very…much. I mean, it’s a stock, not a historical landmark. It’s supposed to fluctuate! And yet, these guys are still throwing money at it. It defies logic.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing – TSMC, if you prefer – will likely benefit. Not because I think AI is some grand salvation, but because people keep buying things. Shiny, complicated things. And someone has to make those things. It’s a simple equation, really. A sad one, perhaps, but simple.
QuantumScape (QS) is predicated on the development and commercialization of solid-state lithium-metal battery technology. Should the company succeed in achieving scalable production of this technology, it could address several limitations inherent in current lithium-ion batteries – notably, energy density, charging speed, and safety. However, translating laboratory advancements into commercially viable products at scale remains a substantial undertaking, fraught with engineering challenges and capital requirements.
D-Wave Quantum (QBTS 8.61%) is one such company. It occupies a niche within this burgeoning field, and, like many in its position, relies heavily on the hope that its particular approach will prove fruitful. To examine its prospects is not to dismiss the potential of quantum computing, but to apply a degree of scrutiny that is often absent in the rush to embrace the next ‘big thing.’
Trump, the man of grand gestures, nudges the oil giants. “Invest,” he says, as if a nation’s troubles can be solved with a ledger sheet. ConocoPhillips, like a cautious wolf, circles the carcass, testing the ground. They speak of preparation, of readiness. A polite dance, this. The oil men are not fools; they’ve seen this play before. They know the cost of a hasty step in a land where promises are brittle things.
Prologis, for the uninitiated, is basically the Amazon of warehouses. Except they don’t deliver your impulse buys, they house the servers that enable those impulse buys. They’ve got a portfolio of buildings so vast, it’s basically its own country. Seriously, 5,900 buildings, 1.3 billion square feet. That’s a lot of square footage. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic just thinking about it. And now, they’re pivoting. Because, surprise, surprise, AI doesn’t run on dreams and venture capital. It runs on power. And space. Lots and lots of space.
First, we have Nvidia (NVDA 0.72%), currently valued at a princely sum of one hundred and ninety dollars per share. This company, it seems, has stumbled upon the modern equivalent of the philosopher’s stone: the graphics processing unit. They claim it powers the artificial intelligence that shall reshape our world. A bold claim, indeed! One might ask, is it genuine progress, or merely a new form of smoke and mirrors? The market, ever susceptible to flattery, has crowned Nvidia the largest company by market capitalization. A fleeting glory, I suspect, built upon the shifting sands of technological hype.
The current generation of cyber-criminals, aided by this…artificial intelligence, are becoming alarmingly efficient. One used to imagine them huddled over keyboards, fuelled by coffee and questionable life choices. Now, it seems, they merely set the machines running and pop out for a spot of tea. Ghastly. And then there’s the looming spectre of quantum computing. A weapon, naturally, in the wrong hands. Though one suspects the truly dangerous ones will be the accountants who master it first.
Optimus. The humanoid robot. It’s supposed to start production this year. Which feels… ambitious. But if it does happen, well, that could change things. It might even justify the current valuation, which, let’s admit, is a bit of a stretch. I’ve been trying to rationalise it, listing pros and cons, but mostly I end up comparing it to the price of avocados. It’s all relative, isn’t it?
Cathie Wood, a lady who knows a thing or two about where the money is going (or, at least, where she thinks it is), predicts that spending on AI infrastructure will balloon from around $500 billion to a rather astonishing $1.4 trillion by 2030. That’s a lot of servers, a lot of power consumption, and a lot of very clever people scratching their heads. What’s particularly interesting is where she sees the spending going. It’s not just about raw computing power, you see. She reckons the growth in networking components – the stuff that actually moves the data – will outpace it, and that these specialized AI chips, known as ASICs, will start to eat into the market share of those familiar graphics processing units (GPUs) everyone’s been hearing about. It’s like a digital game of chess, only with billions of dollars at stake.