Feature
The Gist
- Speed is critical in an emerging AI market. The top AI companies had the research and team in place to quicken their generative AI development and rollouts.
- It takes billions to be an AI leader. The cost for entry to compete at the top of the AI market is in the billions — either from big tech partners, venture capitalists or a corporate balance sheet.
- AI leaders are taking one of three paths to the top. A foundation LLM, portfolio integration or open-source development.
A group of top companies have emerged in the artificial intelligence (AI) market after making a series of quick and strategic moves as AI mainstreams through generative AI.
Each of the companies is depending on one of several strategies: a breakthrough foundation large language model (LLM); integrating AI into their user base at the application/cloud computing levels; or open-source AI development, collaboration and product rollouts. Together, the group is setting the pace and tone for other companies in the tech industry to rapidly develop AI and incorporate it into their portfolios.
Here, we address what these leading AI companies have been up to, what companies they’re working with and how their leadership is talking about AI:
1. Microsoft
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft took an early lead in the latest AI race after its swift moves in reportedly investing $13 billion in OpenAI and securing a 49% stake in OpenAI, releasing the generative conversational AI products Bing chat for search and its Copilot line for its productivity and other software user bases, AI studios for building generative AI apps and custom copilots as well as AI chips. The company has deep domain expertise through the Azure AI line of its cloud computing division. While ranking second behind Amazon in cloud market share and second behind Google in productivity software market share, Microsoft’s timing and decisions in generative AI have made it a brand to chase in the AI market. Expect Microsoft to fully tap its relationship with OpenAI and its researchers as Microsoft seeks a return on its investment and to capture more AI market share.
Some of Microsoft’s latest AI moves include work with Rockwell Automation, the nonprofit medical group Mayo Clinic and the German industrial tech company Siemens.
"With copilots, we are making the age of AI real for people and businesses everywhere," said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, in the company’s latest earnings announcement.
"We are rapidly infusing AI across every layer of the tech stack and for every role and business process to drive productivity gains for our customers.”
Related Article: Microsoft Dominates AI Race With Copilots for Everything
2. OpenAI
San Francisco-based OpenAI is still enjoying both its technical and commercial first-mover advantage in the generative AI race with the release of ChatGPT and its record-setting user base as well as the API-based reach for its foundation large language model, potential ecosystem lock in to its LLM and reportedly $13 billion in backing from minority owner and AI partner Microsoft. Yet, this fall’s CEO and board drama appeared to signal possible internal conflicts as it pursues its vision to “ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity” as well as conflicts tied to the self-imposed nonprofit governance built into its multi-layered corporate structure — all controlled by the board. Regardless, Microsoft’s large stake in OpenAI seems to indicate that OpenAI’s research and products will have flowing mass-market for-profit applications.
Other than partnering with the ML data life cycle platform Scale and acquiring the digital product firm Digital Illumination, one of OpenAI’s recent moves in AI includes the development of a preparedness team to focus on frontier risks tied to the development of AGI: individualized persuasion; cybersecurity; chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats; and autonomous replication and adaptation.
“The best interests of the company and the mission always come first,” says Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in a post at X last month as he was formally being re-installed as CEO.
“It is clear that there were real misunderstandings between me and members of the board. For my part, it is incredibly important to learn from this experience and apply those learnings as we move forward as a company. I welcome the board’s independent review of all recent events. I am thankful to Helen and Tasha for their contributions to the strength of OpenAI.”
Related Article: How to Use the OpenAI GPT Builder for Your Own ChatGPT
3. Google
Mountain View, California-based Google is re-focusing and investing against search market disruption by LLM-powered chat interfaces with its own generative conversational chatbot Bard, Search Generative Experience and integrated AI assistant Duet AI for its productivity software user base — as well as its LLM PaLM, an up to $2-billion investment in Anthropic, with its own chatbot and LLM, and the existing AI portfolio of its cloud computing division Google Cloud. After seeing a search-first market taken with generative AI, Google leadership repeatedly said it will work fast to develop and release in-demand AI products. Thus far, it has been delivering on those plans. Look for Google to gain scalable, end-user AI market share by applying to AI the research and product focus it long applied to search, the compatibility of its market-leading Android mobile ecosystem and its research depth in areas such as robotics and self-driving cars.
Some of Google’s latest moves in AI include work with the streaming company Spotify, the fintech company Symphony and the Government of Malaysia.
“I’m pleased with our financial results and our product momentum this quarter, with AI-driven innovations across search, YouTube, cloud, our Pixel devices and more,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in its most recent earnings announcement.
“We’re continuing to focus on making AI more helpful for everyone. There’s exciting progress and lots more to come.”
Related article: PaLM 2 and More: Google Unveils Latest AI Advances at This Year's I/O Conference
4. Amazon
Seattle-based Amazon made its play in the generative conversational AI market in its fourth quarter with its generative conversational chatbot Q through its cloud computing Amazon Web Services (AWS) unit. Amazon's latest AI play is to integrate its many AWS offerings into the functionality of Q as a business assistant, starting with its business intelligence (BI), cloud contact center and supply chain offerings. Amazon possesses deep AI expertise through AWS and a large portfolio of AI offerings in the machine learning field as well as AI chips. While Amazon AI is focused on its AWS unit, expect Amazon to also make another large mass-market AI play among its many consumer divisions, learning from the cost-control and revenue model lessons of its Alexa division.
Some of Amazon’s recent moves in AI include work with the AI chip maker NVIDIA, the biotech company Amgen and Krungsri Bank of Thailand.
“The AWS team continues to innovate and deliver at a rapid clip, particularly in generative AI, where the combination of our custom AI chips, Amazon Bedrock being the easiest and most flexible way to build and deploy generative AI applications and our coding companion (CodeWhisperer),” said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, in the company’s latest earnings announcement.
5. Meta
Meta is praised for the open-source nature of its large language model Lama, and it is advancing the AI multilingual field with its multimodal translation model SeamlessM4T. The models are part of its broad AI research — including embodied AI and robotics — which indicates its clear AI ambitions. The company’s generative conversational assistant Meta AI is being integrated in beta in the U.S. into its dominant user bases in both social media and messaging through Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The Meta AI rollout comes after Meta made AI its “single largest investment” ahead of its work on the metaverse. With a different business model and larger reliance on its consumer user base than many of its competitors, expect Meta to rollout AI that aims to engage first as it’s commercialized.
Meta’s latest AI-related moves don’t name other companies or deals. However, at the U.S. Senate AI Insight Forum this fall, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO, said that looking ahead, he sees “two defining issues” for AI: safety and access.
On safety, he said that Meta is “going to be deliberate about how we roll out these products. That means partnering with academics and publishing research openly, sharing model cards and setting policies that prohibit certain uses.” On access and referring to the company’s current open-source stance on much of its AI development, Zuckerberg said “having access to state-of-the-art AI is going to be an increasingly important driver of opportunity in the future, and I think that’s going to be true for individual people, for companies and for economies as a whole.”
To the investment community, Zuckerberg had this to say on AI in the company’s latest earnings announcement: "I'm proud of the work our teams have done to advance AI and mixed reality, with the launch of Quest 3, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and our AI studio."
6. Anthropic
San Francisco-based Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives, is a major alternative to OpenAI with its generative conversational AI assistant and foundation large language model Claude and API offering. Anthropic is a well-backed team with up to a $4-billion investment from Amazon and over $1.4 billion total in Series A, B and C financing, including backers such as Google, Salesforce Ventures and Zoom Ventures. The company is partnered with Google and Zoom as well. Like OpenAI, as Anthropic grows, it is “building up” its frontier risks and red teaming research team to “reliably identify risks and build mitigation” for AI safety. Look for Anthropic to grow its presence and deals in the AI market as a go-to foundation LLM provider for new AI applications.
Anthropic’s latest moves in AI include collaborating with Amazon to provide secure Claude foundation model access to AWS customers to build AI applications on AWS cloud infrastructure. The company also partnered to bring its Claude model into the ML data life cycle platform Scale.
At the time, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said that partnering with Scale “allows us to bring our useful model, Claude, to more customers in a thoughtful, scalable way. By combining Scale's AI engineering capabilities with our values-based model development approach, customers now have more assistance as they build and deploy generative AI applications.”
7. xAI
Elon Musk’s xAI is positioning its generative conversational chatbot Grok as a more uncensored alternative to others in the market. XAI’s other differentiator is the chatbot’s access to X’s vast social media corpus. XAI is also openly comparing its large language model Grok against the leading LLMs in the market, indicating its intent to scale the model beyond its X Premium integration. Musk has long predicted AI’s technical rise, often sounding alarms. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, and he laments leaving it. Today, part of xAI’s mission is to “advance our collective understanding of the universe.” XAI will “work closely” with Tesla, a self-driving leader, as well as X. With the mainstreaming of AI, expect xAI to be a distinct player in the AI market with far-reaching visions that match those of the rocket-building SpaceX founder.
The company hasn’t shared any of its moves in the AI market since the introduction of its flagship Grok in November.
“Grok has real-time access to info via the X platform, which is a massive advantage over other models,” says Musk in a post at X last month as Grok was introduced.
“It’s also based & loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way.”
8. IBM
Armonk, New York-based IBM is focused on the enterprise market through its long-standing Watson AI line, which is set up to benefit from the company’s cloud computing depth as well as its established hardware, software and technology consulting offerings. IBM’s latest and key Watson-branded AI play is watsonx, which offers AI app building, a hybrid data platform and AI assistants. As other AI cloud and LLM providers also contend with consumer market dynamics, IBM can stay zeroed in on enterprises and sell its experience as an integrator of AI infrastructure technologies, such as cloud competitor and partner AWS.
Some of IBM’s latest moves in AI include work with AWS, the virtualization company VMware and the airline Aeromexico.
"Clients are increasingly adopting our watsonx AI and data platform along with our hybrid cloud solutions to unlock productivity and operational efficiency,” said Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM, in the company’s latest earnings announcement.
“This is helping drive solid growth in our software and consulting businesses.”
9. Stability AI
London-based Stability AI is at the front of the open-source multimodal generative AI market with the early adoption of its Stable Diffusion image model as well as its Stable Audio, Stable Video and Stable language models. The company says users have created 400 million images with its API, and it names AI and cloud computing leaders AWS and Google Cloud as partners. Stability AI’s open-source research community includes over 200,000 members working on multimodal AI as well as AI for biology. Look for Stability AI’s multimodal LLM strategy to raise its profile as a competitive open-source option for AI application development.
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Stability AI’s recent moves in the AI market include a collaboration with the AI chip maker NVIDIA, work with AWS for its Stability AI model to be available for building AI models on AWS infrastructure and an animation partnership with the AI tools provider Krikey.ai.
At the U.S. Senate AI Insight Forum, Ben Brooks, head of public policy at Stability AI, summarized the company’s philosophy on the role of open-source in creating transparency and competition in the AI market.
“AI models will be the backbone of our digital economy, and it is essential that the public can scrutinize their development,” Brooks said. “As part of the diverse AI ecosystem, open models will advance safety through transparency, foster competition and ensure the United States retains strategic leadership in AI adoption.”
10. Salesforce
San Francisco-based Salesforce made a big statement on its early AI research and product capabilities across the enterprise software, sales and AI markets by rolling out its Einstein AI line. Sales is one of the fields most set for AI disruption, and Salesforce is making sure it is part of the AI-sales alignment discussion by layering Einstein into the user base of its customer relationship management (CRM) software. Salesforce’s next challenge is to push for widespread user adoption of its many AI features to embed itself in customers’ new AI-enabled sales workflows as competing AI tools arise.
Some of Salesforce’s latest AI moves include partnerships with both Google and Amazon and work with the retailer Williams-Sonoma.
Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce, said the company is “now the number one AI CRM” in its latest earnings announcement.
“Most importantly, we’re bringing CRM, data, AI and trust together in a single, integrated platform, leading our customers into a new era of incredible productivity and growth,” Benioff said.
