There has been a lot of hype around artificial intelligence (AI) recently thanks to the popularity of OpenAI's ChatGPT. The chatbot took just two months to hit 100 million users because of its capabilities such as generating text, code, essays, and poetry based on user prompts. The success of this generative AI has shown companies how they can monetize this technology.
OpenAI is already charging $20 a month for the paid version of ChatGPT, and Microsoft could be one of the potential winners from this thanks to its multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI. But there are multiple ways investors can take advantage of this tech trend as the global AI market is expected to generate almost $2.75 trillion in annual revenue by 2032, up from $129 billion in 2022.
Let's look at three companies that could benefit from this secular growth opportunity.
1. The Trade Desk
Advertising technology provider The Trade Desk (TTD 4.15%) has been growing at a nice clip. It is outpacing the digital ad industry's growth thanks to its technology driven platform, which allows advertisers to optimize ads according to their requirements.
The Trade Desk's self-service programmatic advertising platform means its customers benefit from improved audience targeting, helping them achieve stronger returns on their ad dollars. As a result, it reported 32% revenue growth in 2022 to $1.58 billion, which was well ahead of the 8.6% growth in digital ad spending last year.
A key reason behind The Trade Desk's faster growth compared to the digital ad market is its AI-driven demand-side platform (DSP). It allows advertisers to automate ad purchases and placements based on the target audience.
The Trade Desk's AI engine -- Koa -- plays an important role in helping the company's clients serve relevant ads to their audiences.
The company says that Koa analyzes data from across the internet to ensure advertisers reach their audience on the right media, in the most efficient way. This helps explain why advertisers are now shifting to ad-tech providers such as The Trade Desk instead of buying ads through traditional channels.
The higher return on investment delivered by AI-driven advertising is why the programmatic display ad market is expected to clock roughly 36% annual growth over the next decade.
The adoption of AI in the advertising market is expected to increase rapidly over the next decade. WPP's media investment company GroupM forecasts that AI-enabled advertising could generate $1.3 trillion in revenue by 2032, compared to an estimated $370 billion last year.
So it won't be surprising to see The Trade Desk become a top AI player in the long run since it is already benefiting from the deployment of the technology in the advertising space.
2. Micron Technology
Micron Technology (MU 3.06%) stock has been down in the dumps over the past year due to the collapse in memory-chip prices that has led to a sharp decline in the chipmaker's revenue and earnings. But management is upbeat that catalysts such as AI could help lead to a turnaround.
That's not surprising as the growing adoption of AI will create the need for more storage and faster computing. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said, "An AI server today can have as much as eight times the DRAM content of a regular server and up to three times the NAND content."
The memory-chip specialist has already introduced products to serve AI workloads in data centers, indicating that it is already on track to take advantage of this secular growth opportunity. More importantly, AI-driven demand is likely to play a key role in helping Micron's data center business recover. The company believes that data center revenue bottomed out last quarter and customers could start restocking inventories as the year progresses.
Moreover, AI should be a long-term catalyst for Micron. The demand for AI chips, including high-bandwidth memory that Micron sells, is expected to grow at an annual pace of roughly 30% over the next decade.
So Micron could turn out to be a top AI stock in the long run, though investors should note that the company is going to struggle in the near term due to an oversupply in the memory-chip market.
But the long-term opportunity in the memory market and the emergence of new growth drivers such as AI explain why Micron's fortunes are expected to turn around in the next couple of years.
MU EPS estimates for current fiscal year, data by YCharts.
With Micron trading at a trailing price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just 10 , investors might be tempted to buy the stock. Those with a high tolerance for risk can buy it right now given the potential turnaround, as the chart above indicates. But cautious investors might want to wait for concrete signs of an improvement in the memory market.
3. CrowdStrike
Cybersecurity is another area where AI adoption is expected to accelerate rapidly in the long run to tackle cyberattacks on organizations, governments, and even individuals. In fact, companies are already using machine learning and natural language processing to ward off cyberthreats.
Grand View Research estimates that AI usage in cybersecurity was worth an estimated $13 billion in 2021. But with a compound annual growth rate of 24% through 2030, it could be worth roughly $94 billion by the end of the decade. CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD 3.63%) is a way that investors can take advantage of the proliferation of AI in cybersecurity.
The company already offers an AI-powered cloud platform that enables customers to detect threats, stop breaches, reduce the time needed to detect and respond to threats, and even stop attacks in real time. Management said on its March earnings conference call that it is "a pioneer in applying AI in cybersecurity."
And the company is looking to innovate further. For instance, it launched AI-powered indicators of attack (IOAs) in August 2022, which can help customers quickly detect emerging threats and shut them down rapidly. These AI-powered IOAs can act irrespective of the type of malware or tool used in the cyberattack, which means that they can prevent emerging classes of threats as well.
So, AI could help CrowdStrike sustain its outstanding growth in the long run because it presents a huge addressable opportunity. The cybersecurity specialist expects to deliver $3 billion in revenue in fiscal 2024, an increase of 33% over the prior year. We have already seen how big the AI-enabled cybersecurity market could become by the end of the decade, which means CrowdStrike is scratching the surface of a massive opportunity.
As such, it could very well deliver the 56% annual earnings growth that analysts are expecting from it over the next five years. So investors looking to buy a high-growth cybersecurity stock that could take advantage of hot trends such as AI might want to take a closer look at CrowdStrike before it soars higher following its 24% jump so far this year.
