CEO Says AI Boom's 'Big Four' Companies Could Soon Shrink To Two

The cut-throat competition in the AI field is predominantly led by four players in the West, but a famed investor known for her bold bets on emerging tech warns that the rivalry could eventually shrink to just two players. Talking to Bloomberg, Cathie Wood, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer at Ark Invest, pointed out that profitability in a currently volatile segment is going to be the litmus test and something not every AI company can promise in the long run. "I think the big four right now are OpenAI, Amazon-backed Anthropic, xAI, and Gemini ... [W]e don't know if this is going to be a four-horse race, or a two-horse race. Let's see, over time, how they leapfrog one another," Wood remarked.

Wood's history of investing in disruptive tech companies is pretty well-known. Her early investments in Tesla and Zoom, long before these companies exploded in popularity, yielded a 150% gain back in 2020. But a time when concern is building over AI companies receiving record-high capital inflow yet not delivering enough profits, Wood is bullish on the prospects of AI. Ark recently predicted that the AI market could be worth $13 trillion before the decade comes to an end. She recently claimed that Tesla is the biggest AI project on Earth, and that the autonomous taxi system could generate trillions in revenue. Aside from its investments in U.S.-based AI companies, Wood is also strengthening Ark's portfolio by investing in Chinese AI giants, Alibaba and Baidu.

Google's do-it-all Gemini AI is integrated into its Workspace tools (such as Gmail and Docs), available in Android, and accessible via free web access. This gives it one of the most diverse footprints in the consumer AI race, covering everything from mobiles to TVs and speakers. Additionally, the company's work with DeepMind, which continues to explore cutting-edge medical and industrial breakthroughs with AI, positions Google as one of the most multifaceted leaders in the AI race. The company's sprawling cloud infrastructure and the recent work on AI-accelerating TPU chips give it a forward-looking advantage that not many rivals can command.

Microsoft isn't too far behind, though. The company's Copilot AI stack is integrated across Windows and Office products, and its Azure cloud is also one of the industry leaders. The company also continues to explore cutting-edge tech such as quantum chips for the future. Microsoft was an early investor in OpenAI and has used ChatGPT for Copilot, but has recently introduced Anthropic's Claude into the mix, as well. Microsoft has also started pushing its own AI models, and continues to push open-source AI development aboard Azure and GitHub.

OpenAI was an early leader and remains at the forefront of the AI race, having bagged some of the biggest AI projects out there (such as Stargate). Finally, we have Elon Musk's xAI, which has made rapid progress in the AI race and is now building the world's first Gigawatt AI training cluster. Despite Cathie Wood's opinion that we could see a two-horse race, Google's chief, Sundar Pichai, recently expressed a belief that "all of us are going to do well in this scenario" during an episode of the All-In podcast.