Year-Ender 2024: Top AI Companies In World; Not Nvidia, But This Mega Stock Of Warren Buffett Is At No.1

Year-Ender 2024: The world witnessed an AI boom in the year 2024, which lifted the largest stock market in the world, Wall Street. Of the top 20 largest AI companies listed, 17 of them belong to the United States Of America (USA), while surprisingly, there is one from Israel that has entered the top 15 clubs. Apart from that, the top 10 largest AI companies in the world are dominated by the USA market, and six of them account for 97% of the entire world's AI market capitalisation. However, it is noteworthy that as the year 2024 ends, it is not Nvidia that holds the title of largest AI company in terms of market capitalisation, but instead the iPhone maker Apple Inc. which is also the favourite stock of Warren Buffett.

The largest AI company in the world in terms of market capitalisation as of December 23, is Apple Inc with an M-cap of $3.850 trillion. Warren Buffett who is called the Oracle of Omaha, has its majority of holding in Apple to the tune of 27.9%. Apple has given a whopping 542.1% to Buffett's holding. Currently, the stock is below the $260 level and surged by 37% YTD.

Apple has been in a tug-of-war with Nvidia in not only holding the largest AI company title in the world but also the largest company title. There were times in 2024, when Nvidia outrun Apple to hold the number 1 rank. Currently, at second rank, Nvidia's m-cap is around $3.344 trillion, while its stock price is below the $140 level with gains of over 184% YTD. In terms of performance, Nvidia stock has outperformed Apple on Wall Street.

Apple has tapped into the AI market with its Apple Intelligence which elevates users' experience with iPhone, iPad, and Mac and builds on the first set of capabilities already introduced. Apple Intelligence is an easy-to-use personal intelligence system that delivers helpful and relevant intelligence while taking an extraordinary step forward for privacy in AI.

Apple Intelligence is available as a free software update with iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, and can be accessed in most regions around the world when the device and Siri language are set to localised English for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the U.K., or the U.S.

Nvidia is the largest AI engineer as its core business is artificial intelligence hardware and software. NVIDIA invents the GPU and drives advances in AI, HPC, gaming, creative design, autonomous vehicles, and robotics.

In third place is billionaire Bill Gates-backed Microsoft with an m-cap of $3.239 trillion. Microsoft has built its generative artificial intelligence chatbot, Microsoft Copilot which utilizes the Microsoft Prometheus model, built upon OpenAI's GPT-4 foundational large language model, which in turn has been fine-tuned using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.

These three companies together have an m-cap of $10.433 trillion, accounting for nearly 64% of the total AI company's m-cap.

Going ahead, at fourth rank is the parent company of the largest search engine Google, Alphabet with an m-cap of $2.356 trillion. This is followed by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta who has a M-cap of $1.496 trillion. Meta was earlier known as Facebook.

Even the world's richest man Elon Musk's Tesla could not be side-lined, as it is in sixth rank with an m-cap of $1.367 trillion.

Cumulatively, these six companies have a market cap of $15.652 trillion, which accounts for nearly 96% of the total m-cap of AI basket.

Other companies in the top 10 list of most-valued AI companies are - IBM at seventh rank with valuation of $206 billion, followed by Adobe at eighth rank with valuation of $197 billion, Palantir at ninth rank with valuation of $181.33 billion, and lastly Dynatrace at tenth rank with valuation of $16.26 billion.

From 11th to 20th rank, Israel-based Mobileye is at 11th position with m-cap of $14.46 billion. This is followed by US companies like Aurora Innovation (m-cap $11.82 billion, SoundHound AI (m-cap $7.57 billion, UiPath (m-cap $7.17 billion, and SentinelOne at the fifteenth rank with m-cap of $7.15 billion.

AI companies have outperformed in 2024, which led to double-digit gains on Wall Street indices. Dow Jones is up by 13% YTD, while S&P 500 index has climbed by 25% and Nasdaq Composite have surpassed its counterparts with gains of 33%.

A new research of IDC titled as The Global Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Economy and Jobs, predicts that business spending to adopt artificial intelligence (AI), to use AI in existing business operations, and to deliver better products/services to business and consumer customers will have a cumulative global economic impact of $19.9 trillion through 2030 and drive 3.5% of global GDP in 2030.

As a result, IDC's research predicts that AI will affect jobs across every region of the world, impacting industries like contact center operations, translation, accounting, and machinery inspection. Helping to trigger this shift are business leaders who almost unanimously, 98%, view AI as a priority for their organizations.