Just about everyone wants a piece of the AI pie these days. Tech companies are spending big and investors are dreaming even bigger. It seems like nobody wants to miss out.
With billions of dollars being poured into AI, there is a lot of money to go around and also to be made – or at least that is what everyone is hoping for at the end of the day. But the main question remains, where exactly is all this money going?
For the most part, you have your big tech giants spending heavily on building data centers and buying up powerful chips in order to run their respective AI services.
And that means the companies that are supplying all this equipment are among the first to benefit from the spending boom. Yup, those are the likes of Nvidia and TSMC for example. The former designs advanced chips while the latter manufactures them. And so the more money that is being spent on AI infrastructure, the greater the potential demand for their products and services. In turn, that potentially translates to higher sales and bigger profits – which investors will look to bet on in the stock market.
I would say that is arguably the more straightforward part. The other part is one that is more tricky to navigate as it doesn’t just involve how much money that all of these companies are making today. It’s about pricing in how much they could potentially earn in the years ahead.
We’ve been seeing this story run for the better part of three years now, with investors willing to pay higher valuations amid expectations of continued AI spending to drive even higher future profits. But therein lies the catch, much of the enthusiasm and excitement is based on expectations of future growth.
But what happens if AI spending starts slowing down? Or perhaps the companies that are spending all these billions eventually find that they’re not making enough money from AI services to justify their investments? The latter in particular has been a question that has been challenging the Wall Street narrative for more than a year already, but is yet to really do much damage to the rally in tech stocks.
Nonetheless, growing concerns if left unchecked could quickly change up the mood on Wall Street. I mean, even strong earnings might not be enough to keep stock prices going higher if investors continue to keep pricing in something much better.
In that regard, TSMC’s earnings later this week will be another useful checkpoint for investors. That is especially the case with elevated Treasury yields already making lofty technology stock valuations harder and harder to justify.
There’s certainly no shortage of money chasing the AI boom but as much as everyone wants a piece of the pie, it will depend a lot on whether all this spending can deliver the profits to match.
This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.