Why VCI Global Stock Surged 113% Today (Hint: It's About Artificial Intelligence)

What happened

You've probably never heard about VCI Global (VCIG -2.74%), but the stock's stunning rally this Wednesday will make you sit up and take notice. Shares of VCI Global doubled today -- yes, you read that right. The stock shot up a massive 113% at its highest point in trading today through 10:15 a.m. ET as investors applauded the little-known company's latest pact with an artificial intelligence (AI) behemoth. 

So what

VCI Global provides consulting services to businesses, with a focus on investor relations, boardroom strategies, initial public offerings (IPOs), and stock listings. VCI Global stock debuted on the Nasdaq Stock Market this year, and it has been a fairly volatile ride so far.

VCI Global is a holding company and operates entirely through subsidiaries. This morning, VCI Global announced that one of its subsidiaries, V Galactech, has collaborated with Microsoft to use its Azure OpenAI platform.

Aside from enhancing its consulting capabilities, VCI Global said it'll also use Microsoft's cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology for its current and new projects, including an all-in-one fully automated AI-based sales platform called robosale software. VCI Global is already adopting other tools like GPT-4 and Microsoft's AI-powered chat tool, Bing Chat Enterprise, to innovate. 

Now what

VCI Global is a fairly young company operating in Malaysia -- it generated only about $8 million in revenue last year, and it was down 25% from 2021. Management said revenue declined mainly because the company was focused on its IPO, and that it bagged most of the new deals only in the last quarter of the year. Those deals should start contributing to VCI Global's revenue this year.

That's pretty much all we know about VCI Global so far. Yet, AI is such a massive industry, and the hype around AI stocks is so huge, that any company making any kind of move into AI catches the market's attention. With a name like Microsoft attached to it, you can't really blame the markets for reacting the way they did with VCI Global stock today.