Let’s look at drug research – a topic most of us have nothing to do with.

Researching new compounds and their effect is very time consuming and very costly, which is why bringing a new drug to the market takes many years and can cost billions of dollars, but thanks to the help of Artificial Intelligence, this process should go a lot faster and should be cheaper in the future.

AI tools can look at hundreds of thousands of potential compounds and determine which combinations might be most promising, reducing the workload for humans massively.

In other research-heavy areas, AI will have a big impact as well. Developing more fuel-efficient vehicles, working on next-generation nuclear power plants, developing new materials with which all kinds of things can be built – all this should be easier and quicker thanks to the growing use of AI in universities, R&D departments of companies, and so on.

Artificial intelligence will have a growing impact on businesses, consumers, and even governments and non-governmental organizations. There’s no sign of this MegaTrend slowing down for years to come.

Instead, many companies are increasing their AI investments, such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), which just announced that it plans to spend $80 billion on data centers this year.

With processing power growing, thanks to the introduction of more and more powerful chips, more AI tools are being developed all around the world, and the more ubiquitous AI is, the more significant its impact will be moving forward.

How to Profit from the AI MegaTrend

Investors can benefit from the growth of AI in different ways. But right now, it’s about “pick and shovel” picks that will benefit the most, as we’ve seen in the past year or so.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the most obvious choice, as its chips are clearly in the lead technology-wise and its business growth has exploded upwards over the last two years, as more and more AI server chips are being sold. While NVIDIA will not have the market to itself forever, its technological lead should allow the company to have a strong market share in the future too, and with the market growing rapidly, NVIDIA has significant growth potential still, despite being a very large company already.

Other AI hardware companies that should benefit a lot from this MegaTrend include semiconductor companies Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), QUALCOMM (NASDAQ: QCOM), and Arista Networks (NASDAQ: ANET), which are all seeing their business growth thanks to growing investments in AI-focused data centers, sensors, connected devices, and so on.

AI software and services companies, for those that don’t want to play the hardware side, include MSFT thanks to its stake in ChatGPT, but also Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG), or Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE), which are coming up with more and more powerful AI productivity tools. 

Investors can also choose among some of our Artificial Intelligence picks to benefit from the broad Artificial Intelligence trend.