AI has helped Microsoft beat Apple to become the most valuable company in the world
Microsoft reports earnings on Tuesday and investors are hoping the good times keep on rolling. Over the past few weeks, the company overtook Apple to become the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization.
Microsoft has been boosted by its artificial intelligence work, including a multibillion dollar investment and partnership with Open AI, maker of ChatGPT.
Artificial intelligence is now a feature in lots of Microsoft’s products. Let’s say you get forwarded a long email thread, said Eric Boyd, who leads the AI platform team for the company.
“What on earth are all these people talking about back and forth? I can just get a summary of ‘This is what’s going on with it,'” he said.
Microsoft has also deployed AI on LinkedIn and in its cloud computing services. All of that has played a role in helping the company become the most valuable in the world, according to IDC analyst Ritu Jyoti, who’s an advisor to Microsoft — adding that the company’s leadership is getting this technology roll-out right.
“They had missed the opportunity when it came to cloud — they had become a little bit of a laggard in that,” she said.
Jyoti said Microsoft has kept a tight focus on what it wants AI to do. “It was all about bringing tangible business outcomes to the customers.”
But Microsoft’s position as a leader in AI isn’t guaranteed.
“Companies are spending billions to tens of billions of dollars in trying to compete in generative AI. And it’s just started,” said Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for AI Safety and an advisor to artificial intelligence company xAI.
Hendrycks points to a recent AI hardware purchase by Meta.
There is one other thing Microsoft is likely to be dealing with going forward, however: more government regulation of AI.