The technology industry was thrown into turmoil over the weekend after OpenAI fired CEO Sam Altman and staff threatened to quit. At the end of the day, Altman announced he would be joining Microsoft and most of OpenAI's staff has threatened to quit.
One of the beneficiaries today is C3.ai (AI 3.02%), which has seen its stock rise as much as 8.2%. Shares are up 7.3% as of 12:40 p.m. ET.
C3.ai captures the AI imagination
The stock performance of C3.ai has been driven more by artificial intelligence hype than anything else this year. You can see below that revenue is up just 3% in the past year and the company is losing money, but that hasn't mattered because the stock is up 58.3%.
Today's move is a continuation of the speculation that eventually C3.ai will be a winner in artificial intelligence.
The shakeout doesn't favor C3.ai
As of midday Monday, it looks like Microsoft was the big winner from the OpenAI shakeup. Talent has the option to go there and follow Sam Altman. Plus, the company has the infrastructure and customer touchpoints to build a huge AI business.
I don't think what C3.ai has shown in the last year should give investors confidence that it is going to be a big winner in AI, especially now that this has become an arms race among the world's biggest companies. That's why I'm staying out of this pop today.
