15 Largest AI companies in 2024 (2024)

Investing

Jun 11, 2024

These days, it’s hard to go very long without hearing talk of the rapid evolution of AI technology. With the swift rise in popularity of generative AI chatbots and machine learning-driven services, artificial intelligence is becoming a daily part of ordinary people’s lives, as well as a driving force in the business world. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, rapidly garnered widespread attention. Within months of its public release, the platform has become the fastest-growing consumer application in history, inspiring both awe and concern.

But AI technology is far from new, and chatbots are just one application of this advanced tech. Indeed, nearly every industry has been impacted by AI, from healthcare to freight, and this growth shows no signs of slowing down. Prominent tech industry experts like Bill Gates predict the growing influence of AI technology, and current projections estimate that the global AI market is on track to total half a trillion dollars by the end of the decade. Naturally, this growth is attracting attention from investors. If you’re interested in bringing AI companies into your portfolio, you may want to get to know the biggest players in the field.

In this article, we’ll cover:

• Top AI companies
• What to consider when researching AI companies

Top AI companies

Since AI impacts so many industries, the missions of the top AI companies are incredibly diverse, as are the ways they apply this technology, running the gamut from autonomous driving to cybersecurity to application development and more. AI companies also range widely in terms of longevity, with the list of largest companies including long-term tech sector players and newer enterprises alike. These 15 companies represent the largest market cap in the AI space as of summer 2024.

Largest AI companies by market cap as of June 2024:

• Microsoft
• Apple
• Alphabet
• NVIDIA
• Meta Platforms (Facebook)
• Tesla
• Adobe
• IBM
• Palantir
• Mobileye
• Dynatrace
• Uipath
• SentinelOne
• DarkTrace
• C3 AI

1. Microsoft (MSFT)

Microsoft has remained a leader in end-user computer technology for nearly four decades and currently stands as the largest company in the world. Its popular Windows desktop operating system claims approximately 72% of market share worldwide.

With a $10 billion investment in OpenAi in January 2023 and subsequent integration of its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot and Dall-E image generation into the Bing search engine and Edge web browsing software, Microsoft has claimed its position as the world’s leading artificial intelligence company. In June 2024, Microsoft announced a new class of PCs with NPU built into their processors so they can do more AI tasks without relying on cloud computing.

• Market cap: $3.21 trillion
• Headquarters: Redmond, WA, USA
• Founded: 1975
• AI focus: Web search, image generation

2. Apple (AAPL)

Apple Inc. is a leading technology company renowned for designing and manufacturing innovative consumer electronics, software, and services, including the iPhone, Mac computers, iPad, and Apple Watch. The company focuses on delivering technology with a strong emphasis on user experience, privacy, and ecosystem integration.

On June 10th, 2024, Apple announced ‘Apple Intelligence’ an artificial intelligence software that incorporates ChatGPT to bring a personal assistant-like feature that integrates into Siri and Writing Tools. Other features announced were the ability lock and hide apps, and the ability to schedule texts to be sent at the times you need them to be.

• Market cap: $3.17 trillion
• Headquarters: Cupertino, CA, USA
• Founded: 1976
• AI focus: Electronics, language and image processing

3. NVIDIA (NVDA)

Rounding out the top three AI companies, NVIDIA manufactures graphics processing units (GPUs), whose computing power has been foundational for several generative AI technologies. The company commands 87% of the GPU market and has had a hand in major AI technology advancements, including ChatGPT, which was trained using 10,000 NVIDIA GPUs. The NVIDIA NeMO LLM’s status as one of the most advanced large language models, along with a new partnership with Microsoft, further cement its place among prominent AI companies.

April 2024 was a busy for NVIDIA as they announced the acquisition of two Isreal-based companies, Run:ai and Deci. On June 10, 2024, the company enacted a 10:1 stock split. This essentially means for every one share of the company’s stock that someone would own, they will now have ten shares. The overall value of the investment stays the same, but the price of each individual share is reduced to one-tenth of its previous price.

• Market cap: $2.97 trillion
• Headquarters: Santa Clara, CA, USA
• Founded: 1993
• AI focus: GPU manufacturing

4. Alphabet (GOOG)

Google’s suite of products extends to a large number of categories in the tech industry, with products that touch on everything from education to advertising and fitness to streaming video. 25 years after the company’s founding, its flagship product remains its eponymous search engine, which reportedly accounts for more than 90% of worldwide searches, average 8.5 billion searches per day. Google and its parent company Alphabet expanded into AI and deep learning with the formation of its Google AI division in 2017.

In 2023, the company announced Bard, an AI chatbot designed to compete with Microsoft’s integration of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine, though the release was slightly marred by reported internal disapproval of the product’s rollout. In May 2024, Google released its AI Overviews to everyone using their search engine. The AI Overview seeks to provide more in-depth answers to users questions before they even click through to an article listed with search results.

• Market cap: $2.19 trillion
• Headquarters: Mountain View, CA, USA
• Founded: 1998
• AI focus: Web search

5. Meta Platforms (META)

Recently celebrating twenty years, Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has grown to where 3.14 billion people interact with one of their platform’s daily. The company is known for its social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. While the company has faced criticisms about privacy concerns since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, misinformation spread across platforms, and general antitrust concern, Meta has made strides to increase transparency in the past year – especially in terms of its ad targeting to users.

February 2024, Meta announced its efforts to draw the line between reality and AI generated imagery and videos on its platforms. The move will notify users when photorealistic content has been AI generated. In June 2024, the company announced pans to introduce free artificial intelligence chatbots in on their messaging platform WhatsApp as a strategy to monetize.

• Market cap: $1.28 trillion
• Headquarters: Menlo Park, CA, USA
• Founded: 2004
• AI focus: Social networking

6. Tesla (TSLA)

Twenty years after Tesla launched with a vision for reimagining the automotive industry through technology, the company’s Model 3 vehicle stands as the all-time bestselling plug-in electric car. Tesla has also expanded far beyond the automotive industry, becoming one of the largest global suppliers of battery energy storage systems and solar panels. Among its innovations are self-driving cars and bipedal robotic units, both of which utilize AI technology to sense conditions and events to pilot themselves with minimal human intervention. Musk has recently revealed plans for next-gen vehicles in the latter half of 2025.

• Market cap: $544.26 billion
• Headquarters: Austin, TX, USA
• Founded: 2003
• AI focus: Vehicular AI, robotics, clean energy

7. Adobe (ADBE)

Founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, Adobe is best known for its wide range of creative software products, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Acrobat, and Creative Cloud, among others. These products are widely used by professionals and amateurs alike for graphic design, video editing, web development, and digital media creation.

The company had planned to acquire Figma in a $20 billion deal announce in September 2022. However, with pushback in Europe over antitrust concerns, the deal was called off in December 2023. Adobe’s latest launch is its newest image generation model, Firefly 3, announced in April 2024. The model brings a new level of high-quality images and and better understanding of of prompts given. The company recently has faced backlash over their terms of service and its vague language around Adobe’s generative AI models and what they’re trained off of.

• Market cap: $207.28 billion
• Headquarters: San Jose, CA, USA
• Founded: 1982
• AI focus: Creative and marketing software

8. IBM (IBM)

While artificial intelligence may seem new to many people, one of the “big 5” AI companies has been innovating in this realm for decades. In the 110 years since its founding, IBM has consistently been a cornerstone of the tech industry, producing innovations that have become an ingrained part of everyday life, including the bar code, the hard disk drive, and the personal computer itself. Its Watson question-answering platform, initially developed from 2004-2011, could be seen as the first AI language model technology to attain global notoriety, as a result of its 2011 victory on the quiz show Jeopardy! Since then, its deep learning capabilities have been applied to a wide range of industries, including healthcare, cuisine, hospitality, water conservation, and more.

In the past 5 years alone, IBM has managed to file 1,591 AI-related US patent applications, showing their interest and push for artificial intelligence. And in April 2024, IBM announced its acquisition of HasiCorp for $6.4 billion, furthering its cloud capabilities.

• Market cap: $155.53 billion
• Headquarters: Armonk, NY, USA
• Founded: 1911
• AI focus: Conversational AI

9. Palantir (PLTR)

Palantir Technologies specializes in big data analytics through three major software platforms for the public and private sectors. Each of these uses artificial intelligence to access information and strengthen correlations between data points. Palantir Gotham is used by the United States Intelligence Community to aggregate data for national security purposes, including predictive policing systems. Palantir Metropolis learns and uncovers relationships between data points in private and public databases and is primarily used in the finance industry, perhaps most famously by JP Morgan Chase to monitor employees. Palantir Foundry is a flexible system that integrates data and can make decisions using generative processes.

• Market cap: $53.11 billion
• Headquarters: Denver, CO, USA
• Founded: 2003
• AI focus: Data aggregation

10. Mobileye (MBLY)

Mobileye is another AI company focused on autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems. Through high-profile partnerships with Ford and Volkswagen and Porshe, in addition to 25 other automobile manufacturers, the company’s technology is employed in vehicles across the world. Its products include lane assist, automatic emergency braking, and forward collision, all of which aim to increase the ease and safety of driving. Since its acquisition by Intel in 2017, the company has grown significantly and continued to expand its innovation in self-driving AI technology.

The company recently announced in April 2024 that it had secured orders to ship 46 million assisted-driving chips over the next several years to more car companies race to make cars safer and more efficient.

• Market cap: $24.28 billion
• Headquarters: Jerusalem, Israel
• Founded: 1999
• AI focus: Vehicular AI

11. Dynatrace (DT)

The Dynatrace Software Intelligence Platform, driven by the company’s proprietary AI technology, Davis, is used in products by large companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The platform monitors software and uses artificial intelligence to detect issues, discover anomalies, and monitor performance. When problems are detected, the software is capable of generating and implementing its own solutions without human intervention.

In April 2024, Dynatrace expanded its partnership with Google Cloud, aiming to accelerate adoption of both Dynatrace solutions and Google Cloud.

• Market cap: $13.91 billion
• Headquarters: Waltham, MA, USA
• Founded: 2005
• AI focus: Observability, application security, cloud computing

12. UiPath (PATH)

The defining function of UiPath’s robotic process automation software offerings is the automation of routine business tasks through AI and machine learning. Over the 18 years since the company’s founding, however, its capabilities have expanded significantly, and the software is now capable of executing customer relationship management (CRM) functions and more on a massive scale. UiPath’s financial picture has followed suit, claiming one of the largest US software IPOs in history. With its July 2022 acquisition of Re:infer, the company has added natural language processing to its artificial intelligence arsenal.

In April 2024, the company was names a leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Process Mining, a tool identify automation and improve end-to-end business processes.

• Market cap: $6.76 billion
• Headquarters: New York, NY, USA
• Founded: 2005
• AI focus: Process automation

13. SentinelOne (S)

SentinelOne became an industry leader by leveraging the power of AI for its next-gen cybersecurity software. The company’s AI technology detects abnormal use in endpoint devices and shuts down processes before viruses or bad actors can spread across networks. Its roster of clients includes high-profile brands such as Samsung, Aston Martin, Politico, EA, and Sysco, embedding its products in a number of industries and sectors.

In January 2024, SentinelOne announced its acquirement of PingSafe, a cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP). The acquisition is meant to further enhance the security offerings of SentinelOne.

• Market cap: $5.46 billion
• Headquarters: Mountain View, CA, USA
• Founded: 2013
• AI focus: Cybersecurity

14. Darktrace (DARK.L)

The Darktrace AI machine learning platform learns to detect normal behavior across a network and its users, forming a profile of typical use. When it detects behavior that diverges from this profile, the software intelligently determines whether a threat is present and calculates the most efficient way to attack and dismantle it.

In 2023, the company positioned its product as a viable solution to new email security threats posed by generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, arguing that existing tools are not strong enough to address the concerns raised by such advanced chatbots. It also announced a new AI solution that provides visibility of cloud architecture, detects and responds to real-time cloud-native threats, and sets recommendations and actions to help security teams and further strengthen compliance.

And in April 2024, private equity giant Thoma Bravo announced a deal to acquire Darktrace for $5 billion. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

• Market cap: $5.24 billion
• Headquarters: Cambridge, UK; London, UK; San Francisco, CA, USA; Singapore
• Founded: 2013
• AI focus: Cybersecurity

15. C3 AI (AI)

The aptly named C3 AI’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform utilizes AI’s ability to interpret and translate ideas to provide innovative solutions for businesses. Its machine learning algorithm allows users to envision and create software applications even without expertise in data analytics. Its software has been utilized by major companies such as Shell and Koch in business applications in energy, chemicals, investments, defense, healthcare, and more. The U.S. Air Force has also employed the platform to develop new technologies and improve upon existing ones.

• Market cap: $3.87 billion
• Headquarters: Redwood City, CA, USA
• Founded: 2009
• AI focus: Application development

What to consider when researching AI stocks

If you’re enticed by this quick-moving aspect of the tech industry, you may be wondering if investing in the top AI companies is the right move for your portfolio. Before you make the leap, make sure to do your research. Like any competitive market, there are a number of factors you might consider before investing.

The company’s financial statements should give you a window into its revenue, profits, debt, and cash flow for a better understanding of its finances. Another factor you may consider is the company’s management: what previous organizations have company leaders worked for? What goals have they set? Have they shown success in achieving them? Investors often also investigate the potential risks associated with a stock, such as the company’s regulatory risks, legal risks, and macroeconomic risks, as well as the volatility of its share prices over time.

Additionally, since AI technology is rapidly evolving, it may be helpful to follow the news on a company in which you’re planning to invest, as well as the performance of stocks in the tech industry overall.

Ready to invest in the top AI companies?

There are many options for investing in the technology sector, and Stash can help you get started with shares in top AI companies, as well as an ETF focused on robotics. And with fractional shares, you can begin investing with any amount.