AI in spotlight as Google, Microsoft and Cathie Wood support hot tech trend

The year is barely a month old, but 2023 is already turning out to be one where artificial intelligence is going to dominate the strategies of businesses and the attention of investors.

And this week showed that the biggest of the big names in tech are pushing more of their resources into the nascent area of AI in what is almost a fear-of-missing-out situation, even with the market still finding its footing.

This would come on the heels of Microsoft adding ChatGPT technology to its Azure cloud service, and confirming it has made a multi-year, multi-billion investment in OpenAI, which Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan called "an iPhone moment" for AI technology.

C3.ai, a software company that has AI in its name, continued with its hot streak of late as its shares rose almost 50% during the week, including a gain of 20% on Friday. The company, which is headed up by longtime software executive Thomas Siebel, said it is rolling out a new product suite that uses natural language to "rapidly locate, retrieve and present all relevant data" across a businesses information systems.

As evidence of Alphabet's AI strategy, Google set plans to hold an event on February 8 about "using the power of AI". And reports emerged on Friday that said Google was investing $300M in AI startup company Anthropic.

Noted investor Cathie Wood threw some weight behind the AI industry as her Ark Invest fund used its "Big Ideas 2023" report to tout the importance that AI is likely to have in the coming years. Wood's report said that the market value of disruptive innovation platforms could rise from $13 trillion today to $200 trillion by 2030.